Page 42: of Marine News Magazine (March 2019)

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SAFETY four of the TPOs and have watched our customers learn.

Sea change

We have seen the auditors teach the mariners and reinforce Sub M is a sea change for the industry. You can’t contin- our message. We have seen companies improve. The TSMS ue to operate in the manner that you have always done it. is there for the safety of the crew and company. The Coast This is one case where curiosity will not kill the cat. Look

Guard option enforces safety through a checklist but never around, ask questions, wonder why things are as they are. truly measures the safety climate in a company. That’s unfor- Most things on an older boat are there because someone tunate because the point of SubM is the safety of the mariner. else thought it was a good idea. Take the liferaft stored just

If you are one of those companies who has yet to decide above the engine room, for example. If your engine room on a path to compliance, choose the TSMS option. Look is on fre, that raft is now a blob of melted plastic and it at your company as a whole, the vessel(s), their operations, was your only way to escape safely. Look for a better spot the crew and the risks that are taken and work to minimize to have it ready for emergency deployment. them. If you embrace the law, it will provide you with an We all keep the life jackets and immersion suits in the opportunity to make your company better and your crew bunkrooms. It’s almost like Moses had the locations on members safer. It goes beyond that. one of the tablets and since then we have kept them there.

As each company works within their TSMS and starts If you can, talk to someone that was on a boat that sank. to truly understand it and make it theirs, they are then They’ll tell you that there was no time or desire to go back contributing to an overall safer work environment for in- to the bunkroom to get the PFD or immersion suit. This dustry. Don’t be afraid to be selfsh: that original outlay of happened to a friend of mine in New England waters in money is an investment in your company. Safer vessels, winter. The crew ended up in the water without their im- better trained and educated crews will translate into better mersion suits because it was impossible to get to them be- insurance rates. It might be that they just don’t rise or as we fore the boat rolled over. Hence, you MUST rethink safety.

have seen more than once, it might be a premium reduc- Create a place at your Muster Station where your fares, tion with auditable proof of a working TSMS. PFDs, immersion suits and anything else you would need to

As a former tug owner, a safety management system helped abandon ship can be safely kept. A weather tight box in hold- me grow as a business (more opportunities with a good sys- er that will allow it to foat free might mean the difference tem and a good track record) and it forced me to look at risks between life and death. Look under your wheelhouse dash. and make some hard decisions. If you have a system, then Many of those old wires can go. They are only there because you must live by it. And that may be the toughest thing that someone else was lazy and could hide them behind the door. most of the small tug company owners are facing. Those are three relatively easy things to think about, but

March 2019 42 MN