Page 64: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (March 2012)

The crash and presumed loss of 32lives from the Costa Concordia casualty in January 2012 serves as a stark reminder that there is noamount of advanced technologies that will ever serve to prevent high-profile, costly maritime accidents. Estimatesvary, but generally between 80 and 90% of all maritime casualties across all sec-tors are due to human error. Even with the latest technology available, it is still possible for an ultra-modern, $600m shipwith more than 4,000 souls onboard to goastray in a very bad way. But incidents such as Concordia and the hundreds ofadditional incidents, large and small, serve to make more valuable the recent endeavors of Joe Farrell and his Resolve crew, which this month will open in Fort Lauderdale a $6.5m, 7,000 sq. ft. simula-tion training center that will serve as the exclusive simulation training ground for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines for the next five years, as well as other members of the global maritime community. While the cruise industry as a whole suffered mightily and in unison with the Concor- dia crash, Captain Bill Wright, Senior Vice President of Marine Operations, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., maintains that the cruise industry, as a whole, has an enviable safety culture. ?I think most cruise lines are on thesame page, in that we follow the practices of BRM (Bridge Resource Management),which was a direct result of what the air- line industry did back in the early 1970s,which was CRM, or Cockpit Resource Management,? said Captain Wright. ?It was the result of a number of tragic air- liner accidents where the investigation showed it was a healthy aircraft being flown into the ground because the left seat and the right seat in the cockpitweren?t really working well together.? While the notion of BRM has gained 64Maritime Reporter & Engineering News FEATURE TRAINING & EDUCATION RCCL Resolved to Raise the Simulation Training Bar Captain Bill Wright, Senior VP of Marine Operations,Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.is responsible for 24 ships, including the world?s largest and second largest cruise ships, the Oasis of the Seasand Allure of the Seas, as well as the Freedom class. Joe Farrell, founder and owner of Ft. Lauderdale-based Resolve Marine, has steadily built his company from a one tug operation to a diverse, global organization with a ubiquitous presence in everything from marine salvage to shipboard firefighting training and education. The lat- est feather in Resolve?s cap: the opening this month of world-class simulation center and new corporate HQ in Fort Lauderdale, a facility built closely with but not ex- clusively for Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd.By Greg Trauthwein, Editor & Associate Publisher MR March 12 # 8 (56-64):MR Template 3/6/2012 1:49 PM Page 64