Shipboard Bridge Resource Management

Theory of Bridge Resource management

• By closely examining ship catastrophes, we can
consistently find patterns of human behavior that,
when linked together, caused a ship to come to an
unpleasant, even deadly end.
• The theory of BRM is this: By recognizing these
behaviors and their links to each other, we can
avoid or make allowances for the unwanted
behavior and thus interrupt the undesirable series
of events.
Theory of Bridge Resource management
• The goal of BRM is to help mariners operate their
ships successfully, and It can achieve this goal
because human beings have the ability to modify
their own behavior. Once we learn what we’re
doing wrong, we can start doing it right.
• We can break a couple of the individual strands of
the spider web, and the wed will still do its job.
However, when a series of strands is broken, even
though the strands may not be adjacent, the web
fails.
 Theory of Bridge Resource management
• Those factors ultimately were all linked
together in what we call error chain.
• Our goal is to avoid the avoidable and avert the
apparently “inevitable” catastrophe.
Human Factors and BRM
• Human factors (that is human behaviors in task-
oriented environments) are the focus of BRM.
• We have three navigation resources avail-able on
any ship or boat: equipment, information, and
humans.
Human Factors and BRM
• Getting human beings to work with each other is
often the most important of the interrelationships
among the bridge re-source.
• Our study of BRM concentrates on how individual
and groups of individuals work together to create
a successful voyage.
Voyage Planning
• Voyage planning and checklists are a form of
information.
• Voyage plans are documents created in advance of
the intended transit’s execution, they allow the
maker time to reflect or reconsider or seek the
advice of others about the accuracy and value of
the plan.
Voyage Planning
• The reason things usually don’t go according to
plan is because there is no plan.
• No prudent seaman will fail to have a backup or
contingency plan.
• Weather, current, other vessels, equipment
• Poor execution of any plan, primary or contingent,
can also lead to disaster.
Standard Procedures
• Many shipping companies and most military
organizations have extensive checklists of
requirements for their operations and mandate
following those lists for every ”routine”
evolutions.
• Standardized procedures are effective only when
they are carefully followed.
Situational Awareness and Voyage Monitoring
• How do we know if our plan or our contingency
plan is being followed?
• The answer is that we have to check it ourselves.
Crossing checking is part of situational awareness.
Situational Awareness and Voyage Monitoring
• Situational awareness is more than just knowing
what is going on: we must have an accurate
perception of what is going on.
• One type of crossing-checking involves humans
checking information, and another type of
crossing-checking involves humans checking
humans.
Stress, Complacency, and Distraction
• A good question is not why do we react to stress
but rather how do we cope with it successfully?
• One way to manage stress is by sharing the
workload among several people.
• The number of jobs to be done exceeds the ability
of any one person to do them all, so we share
workload.
Stress, Complacency, and Distraction
• So many “qualified” people on the bridge,
individual watch-standers will begin to assume
that everyone else is paying attention to the ship’s
movements, and thus the vigilance of watch-
standers will decrease. This is known as
complacency.
Stress, Complacency, and Distraction
• Individuals who are not actively contributing to
the handling and navigation of the ship may
become distractions to those who are working.
Communications
• Communicating means more than just talking, or
reading, or listening; it means really paying
attention.
• We must not only make ourselves clear when
speaking, but we must also make the effort to
understand what it is we are being told when we
are listening or reading.
Fatigue
• People who are tired have lower decision making
ability, are slower to respond to changing
conditions, and are less willing to communicate
with other members of their team.
• Cumulative fatigue: the concept that a person who
got 8 hours of sleep the night before an incident
may not have had sufficient rest in the days before
that.
Pilot Integration
• Human beings bring their experience with them to
problem solving.
• The pilot intended track and the crew’s intended
track were not the same.
Teamwork
• The least experienced person can offer the most
valuable insight because he or she has no
preconceived notions about what is “right” or
“how it should be done”.
• Speaking a “foreign” language is a sure method to
exclude someone from a team and break down
teamwork.
Error Chains
• Rarely a mishap attributable to a single
catastrophic cause.
• There is almost always a series of errors, or
violations of BRM principles, that results in a ship
sailing into catastrophe.
• How to break the chain?
 Summary
• The principles of BRM:
1. Voyage planning
2. Standardized procedure
3. Situational awareness and voyage monitoring
4. Stress, complacency, and distraction
5. Communications
6. Fatigue
7. Pilot integration
8. Teamwork
9. Error chains