Trans RINA, Vol 156, Part C1, Intl J Marine Design, Jan –Dec 2014
Alert! [18] states that various stakeholders in the maritime industry such as regulators, ship managers, administrators, designers, shipbuilders, ship operators, technical managers, surveyors and inspectors are responsible
for the life of a ship in terms of HF.
According to Walker [12], more often the root cause of “human errors” can be traced back to the conceptual and build stages of a ship. Hence the early stages of a ship design cycle presents
effective and practical
opportunities for mitigating the risks which the ship and its crew would otherwise face when it enters into service [12]. Therefore the Naval Architects (NAs) who are responsible for the safe design possibly have a direct influence on HCD application. Rasmussen [19] raises the question to NAs “How do you build a ship that is, at the same time, cheap, safe, comfortable, easy to maintain, easy to operate and environmentally friendly?”
Although impressive innovations generally arise in NAs’ minds, if they are not familiar with seafarers and ship operations, the design may be less satisfactory to end users. NAs need to get in touch with those who work and live aboard ships and also gain an appreciation of ‘the ways of the sea’ and of ‘the ways of the seafarer’ in order to produce ships that are really ‘usable’ [15, 19]. Leading academics recognize the need of HF education and training for student NAs in maritime institutions as a long lasting solution to overcome the issues due to poor designs [20].
Furthermore, they recognize NAs’ lack of
awareness of HF and operational problems as a contributory factor to poor design. Kuo and Houison [21] & Walker [12] note that the present Naval Architecture education system is heavily biased towards the technological field and very few have been exposed to such topics as HF. Their conclusion is to add a HF course to the Naval Architecture degree syllabus and to encourage students by demonstrating the impact of HF on each phase of a ship’s life cycle. Another alternative is to provide workplace training for the NAs working in the industry to motivate them in using HCD methods [11]. However, Belcourt and Saks [22] stresses that only a third of what is learned in workplace training is actually used on the job and the transfer of training knowledge to the job is not easy. Wright and Geroy [23] support the above fact in their study on changing the mindset of employees. In addition, industry NAs are already burdened with complex design arrays [20] and hence it will be
difficult for them to effectively implement something which was not learnt by heart.
Upon reviewing the literature it was identified that among all the stakeholders, NAs have a direct influence on the overall safety and wellbeing of the seafarers’ life onboard ships. It was also identified that HF knowledge for NAs is an essential first step to integrate overlooked HF and HCD criteria to develop an improved ship designs. Furthermore, the foundation level of the NAs experience pyramid is identified as the best juncture to integrate HF and HCD knowledge to provide enduring benefits for the industry (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: HF/HCD integration to NAs’ Experience Pyramid
This paper presents a part of an ongoing study which will amalgamate maritime HF and HCD knowledge into the Naval Architecture syllabus, and study its effects through action research as a way to provide a fresh view to the industry from the bottom up. The objective of the present effort is to evaluate the following key points to explore ways to integrate HF and HCD knowledge in to the Naval Architecture syllabus as an initiative to contribute to the education of future NAs:
the students’ current awareness of HF/HCD and shipboard operations
what approaches are suggested by the students to address HF issues onboard ship
students’ feedback on significance of considering HF/HCD in ship deign
according to the students, what are the benefits that seafarers may receive by applying HF/HCD in ship design
In order to initiate the aim of this study, final year Naval Architecture
students from the Australian Maritime
College (AMC) were involved as the first cohort. Two types of data collection methods were facilitated this study: a questionnaire distributed to the students in the classroom and an onboard survey conducted on the AMC training
vessel Bluefin after a series of HF/HCD
activities. The findings of the surveys were analysed and are presented in this paper. The results will be used to develop a follow-up lecture series to integrate HF and HCD knowledge into the Naval Architecture syllabus.
2. METHODOLOGY
In order to make the research aim successful, a problem based research approach, which is an Action Research (AR), is used. AR focuses on research in action, rather than research about action [24] and this cyclic process focuses
to solve a particular problem and produce
recommendations for best practice. Two data collection activities were adopted in the first action cycle as to initiate this ongoing study.
questionnaire distributed in the classroom onboard survey conducted on AMC training vessel Bluefin
C-154 ©2014: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects
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