Making maintenance work for you

By Brad Roberts and Sarah Cameron

Maintenance systems are essential to the safety of a vessel and its operations and make good business sense.

Reducing the risk of expensive breakdowns or accidents increases productivity by limiting costly downtime.

Operators must include a process for managing the maintenance of their vessels within their safety management system. However, operators can adapt their maintenance system to suit their type of operation.

Two operators from Victoria’s Lakes Entrance region talked to us about how they make their maintenance systems work for them.

David Guillot Co-owner, Australian Wildcatch Fishing Australian

Wildcatch Fishing is a multi-species fishery. They own four vessels—two under 20 metres, each crewed by three people, and two larger deep-sea trawlers crewed 24/7 by a rotating crew of five. They fish predominantly for blue grenadier, rock ling, flathead, orange roughy and trevally.

Regular maintenance system: workers unload the fishing nets

Supplied by Australian Wildcatch Fishing

David explained they have a system where they log each vessel’s scheduled and non-scheduled maintenance.

They encourage their crewmembers to log every single unscheduled maintenance issue that crops up, no matter how big or small.

‘Maintenance jobs all go into one database that you can go into and create reports on a regular basis. Our admin officer makes sure she gets the information from our staff to present to my brother—who co-owns the business with me—and myself.’

‘Whether I’m at home or at sea, I watch the lists in the database. I can see what’s getting done and when. For example, I might check in on the database and see the engineers have fixed that refrigeration problem— that’s good.

‘We keep those records in Excel—it’s that simple. We can look back as far as five years to see when we last worked on the rudder, for example. That’s one side of maintenance.’

David explained the other side of maintenance is having good systems and procedures in place to be proactive about maintenance.

‘You’ve got your scheduled maintenance, your big things like your docking and your vessel surveys. They are in the schedule religiously and you can see those coming up,’ he said.

‘We also have a weekly checklist. If you work for me as a master, you need to tick the boxes. When the masters send in the checklist on a weekly basis, the staff in the office then compile the information from everyone’s spreadsheets together to get an overview of what’s going on and where my problem areas are.’

‘We send the report to every Master to show them what has happened for that quarter. It helps them see where they can improve and it shows us where we need to focus on training.’

‘Then there are processes for engineers to follow, like pre-sailing checklists,’ he added.

‘These are particularly about the general navigation of the vessel— your steering gear, because it tends to be locked away in a back hatch that nobody’s looking at, the engine controls, life rafts, life rings, engines, greasing of things that need to be greased weekly, and anchor winches.’

‘When some kinds of mistakes are made, they cost me hours of admin time, so this system really works by helping us address potential issues before they get costly.’

Charlie Grech, Co-owner, Blue Riviera boat hire

Charlie and his wife Teresa own nine half-cab vessels and one barbeque boat, which they rent out in their hire and-drive operation.

Charlie Grech in one of his Blue Riviera boats

Supplied by AMSA

Charlie explained that even though they are tough little boats with new motors, they pull them out of the water to be checked each year.

‘If you keep your vessels maintained you know they are okay and the passengers will have a good experience.'

People’s lives come first—if the boat isn’t right, it doesn’t go out’.

‘When we pull the boats out of the water we check and clean the hulls. If repairs are needed, my son—who is a boat builder—does the work.’

Each of the vessels at Blue Riviera Boat Hire undergoes servicing every 50 hours.

‘Each boat has an hour meter. When we check the oil and the motors, we also check the meter to see exactly when the service is due.’

‘I’m a diesel mechanic by trade but I take the boats to the local outboard motor dealer to be serviced. Each motor comes with a service book that is stamped when the motor is serviced, which serves as our record.’

Make good maintenance your business

Smart maintenance practices can save time and money and they might even save your life one day. Many maintenance problems can go undetected until things go really wrong.

Taking shortcuts on basic maintenance can seriously risk the safe operation of your vessel and the people on it. Good maintenance practices include:

■ never skipping scheduled maintenance

■ replacing and/or fixing out-of-date or missing equipment

■ making sure modifications to machinery and equipment are suitable

■ making sure machinery and equipment is installed properly.

Attempting emergency repairs at sea can be particularly risky with time constraints, bad weather, vessel movement, limited tools and technical skills all making for a messy set of circumstances.

Don’t put your safety, business operation, or productively at risk—good maintenance makes good business sense.

From: Working Boats, April 2019