Feature 4 | BRIDGE SYSTEMS Watching the watchmen
IMO’s performance standards for Bridge Navigational Watch Alarm Systems have formally come into force for new vessels and passenger ships, but all existing vessels of 150gt-500gt have only three years leſt to comply.
Bridge Navigational Watch Alarm System (BNWAS) performance standards, the first phase of which is specifically targeting new vessels in the 150gt+ and passenger ship categories. Developed by IMO to reduce
T
hazardous incidents caused by an incapacitated officer on watch (OOW), the standards – codified as IEC 62616:2010(E) – aim to increase marine safety by alerting vessel personnel should an OOW become immobilised or injured, or simply have dozed off, whilst on duty on the bridge. In the first phase, new ships over
150gt, in addition to all new passenger vessels, will be required to have BNWAS installed. Ten, as of 1 July 2012, existing vessels will be bound by the standards, starting with all ships over 3000gt and all passenger ships. Aſterwards, 1 July 2013 serves as the installation deadline for all existing ships over 500gt, with the process completed on 1 July 2014, when all existing vessels over 150gt will be covered by the standards. Te BNWAS standards have provoked
a mixed response from the marine industry. On one hand, some shipowners have
voiced disapproval at being
‘forced’ to pay for the installation of new bridge systems, with a few having argued that the perceived problem of OOWs becoming incapacitated on duty, without other vessel personnel noticing their plight, is actually quite a rare one. Then again, a number of owners and operators of vessels sized under 500gt have noted that the BNWAS standards are not set to affect their existing fleets until mid-2014 and, subsequently, many have undoubtedly put the issue on the back burner, to concentrate on more pressing operational matters in the meantime.
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he first of July sees the beginning of the roll-out of the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO)
Motion sensor detection has become a handy alternative to expecting crew to manually press a reset button every three to 12 minutes.
Danish inspiration Regardless of whether or not the new regulations go too far, their genesis can be traced back to the early 2000s, when the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) of the IMO unveiled resolution MSC.128(75). This resolution, which was largely pushed for, and full-heartedly taken up by the Danish Maritime Authority in 2002, provided basic performance standards for BNWAS for Danish-registered vessels,
“This could prove a sticky time for leaving compliance to the last minute”
from 15m+ fishing trawlers to larger merchant ships. Then, a maritime catastrophe in
March 2005, in which a multipurpose container feeder ploughed into Denmark’s Great Belt Bridge, causing an onboard blaze and the death of the vessel’s chief officer, prompted the release of document MSC 81/23/2, largely
spurred by pressure from
Denmark and the Bahamas. This latter document proposed the installation of BNWAS as mandatory for all vessels worldwide, and set in motion the development of standards that have entered into force at the beginning of July this year. Added to that, a report issued in 2008 by the Division for Investigation of Maritime Accidents, a sub-group of the Danish Maritime Authority, reported that “insufficient navigational watch keeping” was
Ship & Boat International July/August 2011
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