Fatigue Management Onboard ships

The human element, in particular fatigue, is widely perceived as a contributing factor in marine causalities. The outline of the information is related to the potential dangers associated with fatigue and ultimately the effect on the health and safety of the personnel working on ships.

WHAT IS FATIGUE

There is no universally accepted technical definition for fatigue. However, common to all the definitions is degradation of human performance. The following definition is found in IMO’s MSC/Circ.813/MEPC/Circ.330, List of human element common terms:

“ A reduction in physical and/or mental capability as the result of physical, mental or emotional exertion which may impair nearly all physical abilities including: strength; speed; relation time; co-ordination; decision making; or balance “

WHAT CAUSES FATIGUE

The most common causes of fatigue known to seafarers are lack of sleep, poor quality of rest, stress and excessive workload. There are many other contributors as well, and each will vary depending on the circumstance (i.e. operational, environmental, etc.). The causes of fatigue have been categorized into 4 general factors:

1. Crew-specific factors.
2. Management factors (ashore and onboard vessel).
3. Vessel-specific factors.
4. Environmental factors.

CREW SPECIFIC FACTORS

The crew-specific factors are related to lifestyle behavior, personal habits and individual attributes. However, fatigue varies from one person to another and its effects are often dependent on the particular activity being performed. The crew-specific factors include the following but not limited to:

• Sleep and rest:
  • Lack of sleep, quality, quantity and duration of sleep, poor quality of sleep, sleep disorders/disturbances, and rest breaks.
• Biological clock/circadian rhythms.
• Psychological and emotional factors, including stress:
  • Fear, monotony and boredom.
• Health:
  • Diet, illness.
• Food (timing, frequency, content and quality)
• Stress:
  • Skill, knowledge and training as it is related to the job, personal problems, and interpersonal relationships.
  • Social Media and relevant news from friends or the family
• Ingested chemicals:
  • Alcohol, drugs (prescribed and non-prescribed), caffeine.
• Age
• Medical conditions and illnesses.
• Shift work and work schedules.
• Boring and repetitive work.
• Insufficient rest time between work periods.
• Workload (mental/physical).
• Excessive workload.
• Jet lag

EFFECTS OF FATIGUE

Alertness is the optimum state of the brain that enables us to make conscious decisions.  Fatigue has a proven detrimental effect on alertness – this can be readily seen when a person is required to maintain a period of concentrated and sustained attention, such as looking out for the unexpected (e.g. night watch).

When a person’s alertness is affected by fatigue, his or her performance on the job can be significantly impaired. Impairment will occur in every aspect of human performance (physically, emotionally and mentally) such as in decision-making, response time, judgement, hand-eye coordination, etc. The following are some of the fatigue’s known effects on performance:

• Fatigued individuals become more susceptible to errors of attention and memory (for example omission of steps in a sequence).
• Chronically fatigued individuals will often select strategies that have a high degree of risk on the basis that they require less effort to execute.
• Fatigue can affect an individual’s ability to responds to situations and it can take longer to react to them once they have been identified.
• Fatigue also affects problem solving, which is an integral part of handling new or novel tasks.

Fatigue is known to detrimentally affect a person’s performance and may reduce individual and crew effectiveness and efficiency, decrease productivity, lower standards of work and may lead to errors being made.

Fatigue prevention

There are a number of steps that can be taken to prevent fatigue. Many of the measures that reduce fatigue are unfortunately beyond a single person’s ability to influence, such as voyage scheduling, ship design and work scheduling. Shore management is committed to the importance and benefits of addressing fatigue management and countermeasures in the context of the Company System. The importance of the constant interaction between the Company and the vessel with respect to fatigue awareness and preventive measures on board should not be underestimated.

Shipboard personnel should be provided with training and support so they may recognise and deal with the effects of fatigue. Steps such as the following are important in the prevention of fatigue:

• Ensuring compliance with relevant regulations (minimum hours of rest and/or maximum hours of work).
• Get sufficient sleep, especially before a period when you expect that time for adequate sleep will not be available.
• Using rested personnel to cover for those travelling long hours to join the vessel and whom are expected to go on watch as soon as they arrive on board (i.e. allowing proper time to overcome fatigue and become familiarised with the vessel).
• Creating an open communication environment (e.g. by making it clear to the crew members that it is important to inform supervisors when fatigue is impairing their performance and that there will be no recriminations for such reports).
• Improving shipboard conditions to ensure that when there is an opportunity to sleep, crew members can take advantage of it without interruptions e.g. by scheduling drills and routine maintenance functions in a manner that minimises the disturbance of rest/sleep periods.
• Avoiding noisy works close to accommodation and establishing quiet periods on-board.
• Establishing on-board management techniques when scheduling shipboard work and rest periods, and using watch keeping practices and assignment of duties in a more efficient manner.
• Assigning works by mixing up tasks to break up monotony and combining work that requires high physical or mental demand with low-demand tasks (job rotation).
• Scheduling potentially hazardous tasks for daytime hours.
• Emphasizing the relationship between work and rest periods to ensure that adequate rest is received.  In this respect individual record keeping of hours of rest or work is maintained.
• Taking time to personally verify that watch keeping personnel are getting adequate rest. Ensure continuous periods of sleep.
• Monitor and effectively manage hours of work and rest by maintaining the individual records.
• Re-appraising traditional work patterns and areas of responsibility to establish the most efficient utilisation of resources (such as sharing the long cargo operations between all deck Officers).
• Ensuring that shipboard conditions, within the crew’s ability to influence, are maintained in a good state (e.g. maintaining the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning on schedule, replacing light bulbs and eliminating the sources of unusual noise at the first opportunity).
• Promoting supportive relationship on-board (good moral) and dealing with interpersonal conflict between seafarers.
• Establishing shipboard practices for dealing with fatigue incidents and learning from the past.
• Increasing awareness of the long-term health care of appropriate lifestyle behavior (e.g. exercise, relaxation, nutrition, smoking and alcohol consumption).