EMPA Report: Peter Wylie

June 13th, 2011 by JCB
Posted in Articles, Technical and Training | No Comments »

I have represented the UK as Director on the EMPA board since their General Meeting in May last year. My main duties have been on the E-Nav working group with Kevin Valance, and writing the 2010 safety campaign report.

E-Navigation

This is a massive subject which seems to be growing all of the time as the different manufacturers attempt to get their particular bits of kit onto ships. Some of this equipment has not even been invented yet.

EMPA’s position has always been that E-Nav should be user driven. Kevin brings a great deal of experience to the table as he uses much of the ships navigation equipment every day as a Deep sea pilot. He experiences the problems with different types of electronic charts and sees firsthand how ships crews struggle with them. His experience is well received at EMPA.We tend to have the E-Nav meetings on the day before the Board of Directors meetings at EMPA to save costs.

At the last meeting Nick Cutmore from IMPA attended with Simon Pelletier (Canadian Pilot). This was to cement the relationship between EMPA and IMPA after a misunderstanding caused by an EMPA submission to IMO. IMPA and EMPA will now work more closely together providing one voice from pilots. The EMPA E-Nav working group lost its co-ordinator when Martin Betlaam (NLC) resigned, however the group will continue as it is felt that the end users must have a voice at IMO.

I volunteered to write the 2010 EMPA Safety Campaign Report which will replace the 2007 report on the EMPA website. If anyone wants an electronic copy let me know, although I did send it to all local secretaries. Thank you to all of the pilots who sent in reports since for numbers of reports received the UK did very well. I have added the conclusions to the end of this report.

EMPA General Meeting

This year’s GM will be held in Amsterdam between the 25^th and 27^th of May. Mike Morris is standing for election to the Board of Directors and I’m sure we all wish him luck. There are 7 candidates for 3 posts so hopefully the voting will not be in the same manner as at the Eurovision song Contest.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my year in Europe and would urge everyone to try to attend an EMPA GM at some time as the speakers are very good and it’s amazing how similar the problems are in pilotage are throughout Europe.

 

Conclusions

The number of returned safety campaign forms was disappointing from the European countries and even more so worldwide. There was a 53% drop worldwide and 59% from Europe, this is quite surprising as all returns were made online which, certainly in most European countries, should be a relatively easy method of reporting.

The pilot ladder is the most common method of transfer used and the most common defects are still related to pilot access arrangements. For example the survey revealed 59 ladders with no lifebuoy self –igniting light. This is a vital piece of equipment should a pilot fall into the sea.

The reporting of faults to authorities is improving slowly but is still not good enough to enhance pilot safety. Pilots have a duty to report Pilot ladder faults to the Authority under Article 23 of Directive 2009/16/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to the format applicable to reporting of apparent anomalies by pilots and port authorities. There has been no significant improvement to safety figures over the last five surveys, covering fourteen years and the advice found at the end of the 2002 report still holds true:

“It should be remembered that the next pilot who boards may not be so lucky and an accident could result which could have been avoided had the defect been corrected immediately”

 

Peter Wylie