Promotion

SAFETY FIRST! from the SQE Department

A GOOD INCIDENT PREVENTION MECHANISM: Let’s try to get rid of bureaucracy, mindless box ticking and simplify risk assessment and management of change processes!

We continue to see incidents within our industry where we could, and perhaps should, have better identified the risks and placed stronger mitigations/barriers in the Risk Assessment when planning the task.

When an incident occurs, we are not looking to blame individuals but instead, to better understand what went wrong. We need to find out what actually happened and what system changes we can make to improve our processes and procedures to help our colleagues on board carry out their tasks safely.

With fewer people on board our vessels today, Risk Assessments, Daily Work Planning meetings and Tool Box Talks are all integral to keeping our barriers in place and ensuring they are strong.In our effort to assist both shore employees and our Seafarers on board, we have created a new position in the SQE Dept., namely “RA and MOC Coordinator”. The goal is to carry out our RA & MOC in a timely manner by implementing useful control measures rather than spending time on DANAOS entries! We are happy to introduce our newest addition to the department, Ms. Maria Mothoniou (MAM):

“I graduated from Technological Institute of Athens from which I received a Beng diploma with the qualification of Naval Architect and Marine Engineer specializing in Marine engineering in 2016. I worked in a consultancy office as Junior Naval Architect for 3 years, and then I worked in a big shipping management company as Technical Managers’ assistant in Greece and later on as an Operator in the tanker fleet. Now I am working with you as the RA and MOC Coordinator.”

MESSAGE FROM THE CREW DEPARTMENT: Onboard Promotions

The Company is in favour of the promotion of officers from within the fleet rather than hiring new crew from the open market. This is documented in Procedure 06 of the Company Procedures. The promotions are also measured against new recruits in a Company Key Performance Indicator (KPI). In order to support the promotion of officers from within the fleet, senior officers on board are encouraged to train prospective officers for the duties of a higher rank. To achieve this, both the trainer/mentor and the prospective candidate for promotion need to take the extra time and effort required as this process goes above and beyond the normal duties and tasks of all those involved. In order for the promotion to be considered, the Company requires that several criteria set out in Procedure 06 should be fulfilled. The most important of these are the time served in the present rank prior to promotion, the previous seafaring experience on the same size and type of vessel, and previous performance evaluations. In addition, it is equally important that the Master or Chief Engineer who proposes the promotion should remain on board with the promoted officer for at least 2 months after promotion. The latter has been included so that the promoted officer can be observed by someone who is familiar with all the relevant particulars, the training history of the crew member and the new duties the crew member has to perform etc. This is highlighted for the attention of Masters and Chief Engineers so that they can develop the training on board and make a timely proposal for the promotion of an officer. At the end of the day, it is very gratifying for all those who participated in the process to observe a promoted officer ascending the ranks and developing professionally.

Yannis K. Prokopiou

Brgds Yannis K. Prokopiou