Web Alert: Improving hazard awareness

In an initiative to raise awareness of potential hazards at sea as a means to reduce the toll of preventable accidents, The Standard Club and the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS)  pooled their resources to launch a ‘Spot the Hazard’ competition open to any seafarer worldwide. To take part, a seafarer was required to identify hazards shown on a series of five images depicting typical scenes on board ships. In addition, entrants were required to suggest an original idea designed to enhance safety on board ships.

In total, the competition attracted participation from 590 seafarers, representing 78 companies, who collectively submitted 1,300 posters. This allowed The Standard Club to analyse the results and make some discoveries regarding the perception of risk amongst the seafarers who entered the competition. The full analysis is available in an article in the Personal Injury Bulletin.

The results of the competition were encouraging, with many seafarers scoring top marks on each of the posters, yet every year there are thousands of accidents that could have been prevented, so there is still work to be done in order to translate this understanding of what constitutes a hazard, into safe onboard working practices. We believe that everyone on board a ship is responsible for its safety, so in the interest of helping those working at sea to identify hazards and understand how they could escalate into serious incidents, the posters are available via the links on the right, with the hazards highlighted and an explanation of why awareness of each hazard is important for the safety of ship operations. A poster has also been created and will be sent out to members for display on board to remind seafarers to think about safety as a matter of course during their everyday duties.