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pily walk past a broken handrail if there is a suitable alterna- passenger vessels” that was presented at the 2017 SNAME tive handhold. Meanwhile, when a new crew member comes annual meeting. SNAME recognized that the issues that aboard they reach where they expect to ? nd a handhold and Bruce presented were worthy by awarding Bruce the Lin- will not ? nd it. They may get hurt and (hopefully) there will nard prize for the year’s best paper. Within SNAME there is be a non-conformance report after that, or they may not get the Technology and Research (T&R) Committee. Over many hurt, realize there is another suitable handhold and start using decades this Committee has quietly performed mostly self- it. Rarely will the new crew member make a near miss report, funded research and standard making through its members and the near miss reports are the reports in a SMS that will on a wide range of issues some of which were quite pressing prevent accidents. (Oily Water Separators and small craft stability) and some

Meanwhile, it is easier to train crew members in near miss of which have very quietly become industry standards (the recording when the system is a full QESTH system, because SNAME sea trials standard and the anchor gear guide). throwing Keurig cup in the regular trash (while maybe not Based on Bruce’s paper SNAME formed a T&R Ad Hoc illegal) is a frustration that can be seen by anybody who is committee to further study the passenger vessel egress issue. environmentally sensitized. The crew member can then say: In the past two years, through the Passenger Vessel Egress

Hey Cap, I know how to do better with that. And the Captain Ad Hoc committee, SNAME members have provided input can tell the crew member: write it up as a near miss and we and ideas on technical solutions for passenger vessel egress, will make a remedial plan at the next meeting (BTW, one but the industry, as a whole has failed to provide the sup- of my junior engineers just made the Keurig Cup point to port needed to follow up on the initial ideas and suggestions. me in our of? ce and hopefully we will be remediated soon). Engineers are solutions people and like to provide solutions

I once inspected a ship where crew members had written a (sometimes even for free), but it needs to be remembered that near miss (I am sure with great glee), because a visiting Coast the problems that receive funding provide engineers with

Guard of? cer left an empty Styrofoam coffee cup on top of the continuous focus to provide permanent solutions. At this a bollard. Maybe a little petty, but here was a ship that knew stage SNAME, the technical society for naval architects and how to deal with near misses. Just teaching people how to marine engineers has provided pro bono thinking on a poten- recognize near misses is much more important than teaching tially very serious issue. Maybe now it is time for the larger people how to record things when they went wrong. industry to provide a further incentive to prevent a possible

Near misses do not just exist on ships, they are at least as future industry embarrassment.

big a deal in the marine design game. The marine design ? eld And here I am actually gilding the lily, because in my expe- is ? lled with ? awed designs that often are only remedied after rience, if there is a near miss that did not turn out to be a di- there is a big disaster related to such a ? aw. That does not saster, inevitably it will be a disaster if no preventative action mean that the ? aw struck like lighting on a clear day. In too is taken. One million dollars of prevention (a very ample sum many cases there have been near miss indications, but they for a properly detailed egress design guide produced through were not addressed properly. I will not ? ll Maritime Report- SNAME T&R) is worth billions of cure. The entire SNAME er’s pages with descriptions of cases in support of that thesis T&R budget is about $25,000 per year; SNAME does not (but cannot resist mentioning some names: Exxon Valdez, have one million. The passenger ship industry, collectively,

Prestige, Morro Castle, Marine Electric, Lady D, Estonia, easily does. Don’t miss this near miss.

Deepwater Horizon, Prestige, Fitzgerald). However, I will

For each column I write, MREN has agreed to make a address one in particular, and that is the Costa Concordia. small donation to an organization of my choice. For this

Besides all the 20/20 hindsight stupidity that resulted in this column I nominate SNAME T&R (www.sname.org). It is only disaster, there was one takeaway that did not receive suf? - a few dollars but if others follow my lead it can only bene? t cient attention probably due to the astonishingly low death the entire industry.

count on this disaster. Except for 32 unlucky souls, 4052 pas- sengers and crew were evacuated from the vessel. However,

The Author as an industry, we have failed to recognize how fortunate we were. Evacuating passengers from a large passenger ship is a harrowing and near impossible task, and once a vessel lists van Hemmen more than 15 degrees it is an impossible task, when using

Rik van Hemmen is the President of only the ship’s own egress system.

Martin & Ottaway, a marine consulting

Bruce Hutchison, SNAME Taylor medal recipient, rec- ? rm that specializes in the resolution ognized this issue and wrote a white paper titled: “Capsize of technical, operational and ? nancial issues in mari-

Egress and Survival with Particular Reference to RO-RO and time. www.marinelink.com 19

MR #2 (18-33).indd 19 2/5/2020 10:47:24 AM