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MARINE & SHIPPING
Stena Drilling – Keeping the marine crews on our moored semi-submersibles ‘Ship Shape’ The Problem When operating a UK Flagged vessel, the Master/OIM must ensure compliance with the vessel’s Safe Manning Document (SMD) as issued by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). The SMD details the number of marine qualified crew members required onboard at any one time to ensure that the vessel is adequately crewed for any emergency situation. A challenge for Stena Drilling when operating the UK flagged semi-submersible ‘Stena Spey’ has been formulating a plan to train experienced crew members in the deck department enabling them to achieve STCW II/4 deck rating certification. Despite the Stena Spey being classed as a ‘Class VII’ vessel, we found that our experienced roustabouts and crane operators were unable to achieve this certification because of the nature of the Spey’s work, its mode of operation and the requirements of the training programme which fails to recognise our crew’s sea-service when on a moored unit. Whilst the vessels safe manning certification requirements were always met, this inability to achieve II/4 certification reduced the flexibility in terms of fleet succession planning and also impacted recruitment processes which meant that experienced roustabouts without II/4 certification were unlikely to be considered for roles despite boasting impressive experience on their CV. To achieve II/4 certification, or Navigational Watch Rating (NWR), each candidate must be medically fit to carry out lookout duties at night and complete the basic ancillary training for a seafarer, which includes: •
Personal Survival Techniques.
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Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities.
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Elementary First Aid.
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Fire Prevention and Fire Fighting.
The above is not a problem for offshore oil and gas deck crews working on-board the Stena Spey, who are amongst the most experienced in the North Sea, with relevant STCW and OPITO approved training courses included within our comprehensive training matrix for our crews. In addition, each candidate must complete at least 6 months of sea service aboard one of our vessels. Again, easy enough to achieve compliance, as each member of Stena Drilling’s offshore staff are registered seafarers with the Master/ OIM on-board confirming sea time upon completion of each successful trip. The challenge for our deck crew was in meeting the final requirement for a navigational watch rating; the requirement to provide evidence of steering the ship and contributing to the safe watch on-board. On a moored semi-submersible that is only ever moved under tow by an anchor handling vessel, the challenge to Stena Drilling was formulating a plan to provide evidence of steering a ship to fulfil this final requirement. In essence – how to you drive a ship that is moored?
www.ogv.energy I April 2021
At Stena Drilling, our core values of ‘Care, Innovation & Performance’ are key to day-to-day business processes. A recent success story demonstrating the application of these core values, which has the potential for wider benefits if replicated across the drilling contractor community, has been the company’s proactive approach to achieving STCW certification for our deck crews on-board one of our semi-submersible units.
