A fresh look at ship operation manuals

Ship operating manuals have been around for many years in one form or another and to varying degrees of usefulness to the people on board, whether as a collection of ?crib-notes? at the crew hand-over or as a series of professionally produced manuals.

The reasons behind producing such manuals have always been to aid the engineer or deck officer in familiarising themselves with the systems and equipment on joining a vessel, for their day-to-day operations and for infrequently performed operations. Sometimes the reason is to protect from litigation, i.e. the ship operator wants to demonstrate it has taken due diligence, but, if that becomes a primary reason, the resulting manuals tend to decline into a legal-speak document and away from the user-friendly tool that they should be.

Merchant ships have become more complex both in their equipment and operation whilst manning levels have reduced. At the same time legislation has imposed additional burdens on all who operate such vessels. Officers, deck and engineering, are highly trained, and need to be, in order to cope with the demands of present day shipping but there is no substitute for experience. However, experience takes time to gather and with only three or four officers in the deck and engineering departments of a modern ship that pool of experience is very limited. That is where a good set of manuals covering all the ship?s equipment and systems becomes an invaluable tool as it provides the officer with instant knowledge of the systems on board.

Putting together all those aspects required into quality, user-friendly manuals is a lot more difficult than it might at first seem and has led ship operators to use companies specialising in this field. One such company specialising in producing these types of manuals is the UK-based Worldwide Marine Technology (WMT), which has been producing manuals since 1993. The current team of writers and project managers who are in the main ex-captains, chief engineers and electro-technical officers, along with other specialists, are now engaged on work as diverse as passenger vessels, LNG carriers, container ships, tankers, car carriers and FPSOs. In support of these authors are technical illustrators, editors and a printing department.

Ship?s library

Equipment manuals have probably been on ships since machinery was first used at sea and a modern vessel will have cupboards and filing cabinets crammed with equipment manuals and shipyard drawings. Unfortunately many equipment manuals cover a range of products and most offer a range of options, which may or may not apply to the ship concerned. The better manuals supplied by equipment manufacturer?s are comprehensive and useful but it can take time to find the information which is pertinent to a particular problem which concerns the officer and, when there is a problem, time is in short supply. Regrettably not all vendor manuals are useful and many are littered with poorly produced diagrams and confusing text. At best these poor manuals offer only vague advice on the equipment concerned and, at worst, they can cause confusion and mal-operation.

Accompanying the library of manufacturers? manuals there is usually an archive of shipyard drawings. How good or bad these are depends upon the shipyard, but at best there are many drawings to trawl through in search of the pipeline or other system of concern. This is time consuming and, after the ship has been in service for a few years, the drawings are probably filed incorrectly, missing or unreadable. An additional problem is that the drawings may not be accurate due to modifications made during commissioning and initial operations.

Operating and maintaining a modern ship with minimum manning levels is a daunting task which calls for skill, knowledge and dedication but that work is made more difficult by badly produced, irrelevant or misleading manuals and out-of-date drawings.

What makes a good

manual?

What is needed is a set of ship specific operating manuals which are written in plain language and are well illustrated with clear colour drawings of systems fitted in the ship. The manual must be accurate for the specific vessel; even sister ships differ and so each require their own specific manuals. The line drawings must clearly show the actual system as installed and only that system. To further aid clarity, the careful use of colours is essential.

Text must be written so that it can be understood by individuals for whom English is a second language. Procedures must be written precisely so that there is no confusion as to what must be done to perform a task. Accidents can, and do, happen because people misinterpret what a manual says. There is no place for confusion in a good manual and the operator must have confidence that the system will operate as planned if the procedure is followed exactly.

A good manual must also be capable of being updated when changes in the ship?s plant are made and that means effective communication and cooperation between the ship operator and the writer of the manual. A good manual that is not updated as and when necessary soon becomes a bad and unused manual.

One of the principal ways the work is undertaken by WMT is a high reliance on ship visits and usually there are a number of these scheduled during different stages of the ship?s construction. Firstly, in the shipbuilding yard and, secondly, a main verification visit once the ship?s staff have used the manuals for a couple of months. Typically two of the authors from the different disciplines will stay with the ship?s staff for two to three weeks, learn from their experience and line-walk all systems against the draft illustration and text. Once the verification is concluded, the manuals are completed and forwarded as a final copy, usually before the relief crew join, so that the manuals are available to them. Hand-overs are often limited to a few hours, but the complete manual, verified by the first crew and the authors of the manual and re-issued, are a tangible asset to the safe operation of the vessel; an asset which is there for the life of the vessel.

Using technology

Different people have different preferences in their use of these manuals, with some preferring to read from a printed version and some happier to access electronic copy where they can perform word searches for key information. CD ROMs are now a normal addition to the service. They are hyper-linked from the contents list to the body of the text to enable rapid access to relevant sections. Recently a new innovation has been introduced to animate the illustrations on CD ROM where there is a process. For example, ballasting or pumping bilges. This gives junior and joining staff visual portrayals of the systems and the ability to ?practice? before they are in control. The animations are designed like a mimic board so that Senior Officers can test the juniors in their plant operation before they operate the systems live. Not only is this a real benefit in itself, but also a demonstrable training session, moving some way towards satisfying ISM requirements.

Training

Well written, comprehensive manuals for cargo, machinery, bridge, etc., are also an excellent training aid for junior officers and cadets and this aspect of the product should not be overlooked. By their very nature they are pertinent to the ship on which the junior officer or cadet is serving and they are as up-to date as any textbook available.

A new vessel can often command a large budget for training of the stand-by crew, but what happens to the benefits? They are diminished over time due to staff turnover and the expertise is lost. However, putting the same knowledge into a ship-specific operating manual often costs less and that knowledge is kept with the vessel for life.