As we all know, the IMO Marine Shipping Circular 1334 requires the Master to conduct a Psychological Trauma Debriefing. For those of you, who have missed this important guideline the exact wording, is as follows:

Post Incident Follow Up; the ship-owner should be aware that the seafarer may suffer from trauma or similar condition after being victimized under an attack from pirates or armed robbers.  An important first step in reducing the risk from trauma is for masters to debrief crew immediately after the attack or release of a vessel in order to get crew to confront their experiences.

Conducting a good and robust debriefing requires not only skills, but specific and essential training. Therefore it seems unrealistic just to expect that all Master, owners, SSO and CSO are capable to arrange and conduct a psychological debriefing. There are many aspects in obtaining the correct debriefing technique and worst case would be the contrary outcome, which could damage more and definitely not support the individual seafarer, who is in need for a mind-clarification after having been subject to a piracy attack – or more realistically a serious accident.

There is much more to a psychological debriefing than just recapping a series of events. Letting steam out, building a common picture and applying psychological support to the crew-members are just some of the essential elements and the most optimal debriefing consist of 6 structured phases, which should be known to each de-briefer. These phases are; Introduction, facts, thoughts, emotional, support and termination.

However, looking at the maritime industry it is difficult to find training or courses, where debriefing techniques are included. In addition this is a very soft-skill topic and many ship owners and managers are reluctant to provided additional training beyond the statutory requirements. But isn’t this a ‘statutory’ requirement, one may ask. Probably not, but isn’t it a fact that nearly all first class ship operators follow guidelines as well as regulations?

The benefit of Psychological Debriefing Technique training is also visible in any severe post-accident case. Having witnessed a casualty, a loss of life, a suicide or a severe accident, requires by all means the same professional crew care and emotional abreaction. Even though it is not ‘macho’ to release feelings and emotions amongst seafarers, it is still the best method of commencing a comprehensive stress management package facilitating the early detection and prompt treatment of psychological conditions such as PTSD.

My name is Bo Grønhøj and I am a Master Mariner. I my younger days I sailed as a Chief Officer onboard gastankers, oiltankers and ferries. I have also taken my DP ticket and worked for Alcatel installing fiber optics worldwide. My last job at sea was as a DP officer working for Stolt Offshore onboard a pipelayer. In 2003 I went ashore and took up a position as Safety Officer for Torm in Copenhagen and the following 8 years I was part of the HSEQ Department and responsible for vetting, security and safety awareness in general. My primary area of expertise is safety and security. However I also cover vetting, port state control, crisis management and emergency response training.

What does specifically “being open to change” and “ability to learn fast” mean in the leadership potential context? Are those really the two most important components of leadership potential? And if so how to measure if a certain person possesses those components? And so on and so on…

Almost every company we come across and talk to, has some challenges with or discussions about evaluating leadership potential and making sure the right people are chosen for promotion.

In many cases it is not the question which competencies to measure but how, in order to make sure we do not only consider data from the past but has a future-oriented approach.

Some companies choose to use psychological tests, supplemented by observations in a group context, intelligence tests and individual interviews. Others relate more to performance appraisals, and 360 degrees feedbacks and achievements of the person in question.

And even though research shows that intelligence tests can predict right leadership performance as good as competency interviews and up to 10 times better than personality tests – if there is no right stimulation in the work environment the person can fail anyway as a leader. And at the end all the effort and time the company uses in order to select and promote the right candidates is wasted just because the direct manager of the person does not know how to stimulate potential to grow.

In our company we are really curious about what are the best practices in leadership assessment. Therefore we invited people from different leading Danish organizations to participate in workshop and share experience in assessment of leadership potential in operational context for the benefit of us all.

I am so looking forward to our workshop in June on the assessment of leadership potential. I hope we will get a chance to learn more about what leadership competencies are appreciated in the Danish industry sector and how other companies evaluate who is the right leader to be.

Ewa Poulsen, Chief Instructor, People Skills

Like a giant jigsaw, the final piece of the dome was slotted into place this afternoon. We are still a while away from conducting course one but we are working hard on the programmes.

Maersk Training’s new drilling simulator will be able to provide infinite training possibilities for an Oil and Gas industry, which is constantly striving to improve safety standards.

Along with my colleagues we are currently developing practical drilling and well control training modules to give a realistic experience that wasn’t previously possible. They include team-based training and human factor analysis showing how people react and cope in pressure situations.

In the past, training has been based around mainly the theory, but by combining theory with practical experience, participants get a ‘hands on’ feel during an operation and what they may expect in the real world. The well control modules include issues during casing, tripping, cementing, stripping, trapped pressure, volumetric, bullheading, wait and weight, and the drillers method.

 Practical drilling scenarios include stuck pipe, jarring, pipe handling, slug behaviour, differential sticking, and managed pressure drilling (MPD).

The DrillSIM 6000 provides valuable down hole graphics and information to add a visual dynamic in our training not seen before.

We can model our training to suit, Jack ups, Semi’s, and Drillships in fact we can load software to suit any rig type, be it generic or a specific design.

An industry first is in being able to combine our maritime (control room), crane and engine room simulators with our drilling simulator to be able to run interdepartmental combined senario’s including EDS, Drive Offs, Blow outs, Fire, Thruster issues and other emergency situations that may arise.

You get the picture, it’s pretty active here but this is where you come in, if you have a wish list for a particular aspect of training, what is it? We are constantly developing new training modules to fit in with our clients’ needs and ensuring we are one step ahead in finding training solutions in a high profile industry. Your wish list could be part of it.

Denis Edmonds, born and bred in New Zealand locally known as Aotearoa – `the land of the Long white cloud´ Married with 2 children, I moved to Svendborg to work at Maersk Training in January 2012. I began working offshore in 1990 on a semi submersible drilling rig in Australia and continued working on conventional semi-subs for the next 11 years around the globe. Within that period I also worked on a production platform in NZ for 2 years during the drilling and production phases on the Maui B platform. In 2007 I joined Maersk Drilling and worked on the Kantan V, Maersk Explorer, and the Maersk Developer in both the ship yard and in operation in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2011 I became a Drilling Assessor within the NZ Drilling Industry, before getting the opportunity here with Maersk Training in 2012.

The next edition of eSea, our Maersk Training Svendborg emagazine, has a historical theme but we need help to tell one particular story. It is very Titanic orientated, marking how much seafaring and training for it have developed over the past century. The disaster lead directly to a huge number of changes for vessels, crews and passengers alike.

It was one passenger who triggered this blog – imagine how exciting it was to stumble upon recovered body number 271 and how its story started to open up a whole Titanic world here in Svendborg. Yes Svendborg. It is understandably strange the way national broadcasters treat disasters – how many times have you heard lines like – ‘a plane has gone missing over Turkish airspace with 236 passengers and crew onboard. None are believed to be Danish’? – or English, or American or whatever depending on which broadcaster announces it. But in this case there is a genuine Svendborg connection.

The cold statistics are that there were 14 Danes onboard the Titanic, of whom two survived. One who didn’t was Jacob Christian Milling who we reckon is a genuine local hero, here on the island of Funen. An unsung hero and this is where we hope you can help put words to a melody.

We’ll tell as much of his story as possible in eSea – but here’s the outline. Jacob Milling was an engineer on the South Funen Railway, he was on his way to New York and then Philadelphia to source new trains for the Odense-Svendborg line. Aged around 48 he’d considerable experience both in the States and back home where he’d designed for the Faborg line what was then the biggest engine ever built in Denmark. The American engines were attractive because they were much cheaper than German or British-built engines, but in a preview to the US car industry, they were coal guzzlers. Milling did much to improve their performance.

Anyway as a second class passenger onboard the Titanic he was last seen alive heading to a lifeboat, his body recovered by the Mackay-Bennett, a cable-laying ship chartered by the White Star Line to search for bodies. As a strange quirky twist, the Mackay-Bennett mimicking the Titanic’s lifeboat situation, only had enough coffins for a third of the bodies recovered. Another twist was that Jacob sent one of the last non-emergency telegrams from the stricken vessel. Do you know any more about Jacob’s story?

Richard Lightbody – Communication Coordinator

The philosopher Jacob Needleman once said that “you should be open-minded but not so open minded that your brains fall out”. I perceive it in the context of learning as a healthy attitude. And I really appreciate course participants with such a mind-set. Being open and curious yet not taking everything for granted, more like skeptically curious about the methods, theories and models we discuss when training. Sometimes I am luckier with the audience than other times. I’ve had situations where people were so “fossiled” in their own way of doing things, that anything new was simply wrong as a principle. Working with such people is not even a challenge; it feels like a waste of time, since they have closed their brains to knowledge before I said “good morning” On the other hand I also met many who had a big question mark and curiosity of a child still written on their faces even though some of them were in their late fifties. Such people can “make my day” and the more challenging questions they ask – the better brain-gym workout I get. I believe that this ability of learning is a great part of their leadership potential and should be addressed when promoting or hiring for leadership positions and not as it is done in many organisations by only looking at the historical data ……”how well the individual has been performing so far”. Our constantly changing world is full of turbulence that makes no business safe or certain to deliver results, it is necessary for organisations to be proactive and decide what it means to have a leadership potential for the future. Potential as I see it has only two main components: being open to change and ability to learn fast. It is not a new approach, I realize, however I cannot see the organisations have learnt much, and still promote people who are either not willing to learn or are so open minded that their brains fall out – depending on the business we look at.

Ewa Poulsen, Chief Instructor, People Skills

In modern shipping this is unfortunately not always the case. Many shipping companies have issued comprehensive sustainability plans and so-called best management practices. Every company’s safety management system will contain the motherhood statement that safety is never to be compromised, but in the real world a shipping company always has several considerations front and centre in the decision-making process. And many of these considerations challenge safety in many ways. It is notable that the shipping company behind Costa Concordia had issued a sustainability plan for 2011, where they intended to evaluate the effectiveness of the Company’s Bridge Team Management training and also a study into a new system of announcing that passengers must report to their Muster Stations (in case of an emergency).

To be ‘Best in Class’ is also a very common goal for many tanker operators. And yes, indeed, many are good in class, but to be the best class takes more than just including this into a Key Performance Indicator and then simply continue without any robust and comprehensive changes to reach that best level. One of the most important drivers to reach the best-in-class level is quality training resulting in best-in-class seafarers.

One way to obtain quality training is to source for training institutes, who are capable of delivering quality training. But this exercise is not easy and quickly ends up with sourcing for cost competitive training institutes instead. One may ask the question; who in a shipping company is doing the training institute assessment? Is this a HR or HSEQ task? Or should the skilled and well experienced seafarer be the one to evaluate the training performance offered?

Exceeding all applicable legislative and regulatory requirements is also commonly used in many sustainability policies, however a closer look into the provided training and course activities, it is becomes very hazy and foggy to see where the level exceeds the minimum requirements. Many maritime companies are registered in tax-free fiscal paradise countries. In many cases, this does not encourage companies to train crew and master to a higher level, but rather attracts those who wish for commercial advantage with the minimum amount of training required by international regulations. Such companies should take into consideration that business excellence is acquired by those who take into consideration the level of non-mandatory training in order to establish the quality level of the crew and to ensure a supply of high caliber seafarers. It would all be much easier is we do what we say !

My name is Bo Grønhøj and I am a Master Mariner. I my younger days I sailed as a Chief Officer onboard gastankers, oiltankers and ferries. I have also taken my DP ticket and worked for Alcatel installing fiber optics worldwide. My last job at sea was as a DP officer working for Stolt Offshore onboard a pipelayer. In 2003 I went ashore and took up a position as Safety Officer for Torm in Copenhagen and the following 8 years I was part of the HSEQ Department and responsible for vetting, security and safety awareness in general. My primary area of expertise is safety and security. However I also cover vetting, port state control, crisis management and emergency response training.

We’ve had the Apricot, the Apple, the Blackberry and now, the Raspberry – $35 worth of basic computer designed to teach the next generation of innovators and hackers. They intend that every school kid in the UK will have one by the end of the year. How much can we learn from computers? At Maersk Training Svendborg the computer is not just an everyday part of our lives, it is our tomorrow.

Looking out the office window I see through the mist builders rapidly putting concrete slabs together like Lego blocks, creating a new complex – a temple to technology.

The main rooms in this special place will be wholly reliant on the power of the computer. Rather like a modern aircraft at 12,000 metres, without computer power the opportunities for safe progression are severely curtailed. Pilots were amongst the first to train on simulators, but here at MT with our feet firmly on the ground, we are continually amazed by just how strong and valuable is the power of creating an ‘unreal world’.

They’ve just carved out of a corner of the original MOSAIC building and placed into it more flat screens than you’d see in a TV showroom and suddenly with some very clever programming and technology, you are hovering over a Supply Vessel in the North Sea lifting vital supplies on to a rig.