Reviewing the situation (Feb 2020)

Master and Marine Consultant Captain Andrew Liebmann AFNI asks what situational awareness means in reality, and how can we make it work to our advantage

Situational awareness is the opposite of tunnel vision. It’s the difference between looking and seeing. To maintain situational awareness, at least one member of the team needs to be looking away from the area of primary focus, and making sure that there’s a ‘Big Picture’ observation.

For instance: when everyone else is looking down at the ship’s side while docking, someone should be on the opposite side and reporting anything relevant. When planning an alteration to avoid a close quarters situation, checking astern and further past the immediate area can prevent the vessel from altering away from one danger into another. If there is an emergency inside the ship, someone needs to keep navigating safely while it is addressed.

safely while it is addressed. Ideally, every individual in the team should have good situational awareness, but at minimum, team tasks should be divided so that all relevant areas of focus are given enough attention and there are no surprises. As Master, I try to delegate as much of the detailed work (including conning, communicating, and recording) to the lowest rank person who can handle the job. This leaves the most experienced person free to step back from the hands-on execution of any particular task. That allows both the OOW and, if present, the Master to personally keep good situational awareness, which can then be passed on to the team where appropriate. When I am focused on a specific task (such as manoeuvring the ship onto the dock, or making complex arrangements on the radio), having the OOW look out and around is critical to my peace of mind.

Focus and drive
Focus and drive As we gain more experience and proficiency, we can keep track of more (and more complex) tasks without losing situational awareness. When we start our careers, even a simple task like steering a compass course may require every bit of our focus, and we might lose track of what else is happening around us if we are not part of an effective team. Knowing the abilities of each team member helps keep everyone from being overloaded.

There are many threats to situational awareness, and we should do all we can to combat them. Things that detract from situational awareness include the multitude of paper log books, nuisance alarms and false alarms, poor ergonomics or sight lines, the expectation that we can ‘multitask’ items of lesser importance, side conversations, fatigue and uncomfortable environments.

The good news is that there have been many procedural and technical enhancements over the years that help us achieve and maintain good situational awareness. For example, the modern Integrated Bridge System (IBS) puts a massive amount of information where we can understand it visually (primarily on ECDIS and radar screens). When properly configured and well understood, this allows for excellent interpretation of many sensors, giving a much more complete understanding than the bad old days of manual measurements and paper plotting. CCTV cameras allow the quick and accurate assessment of unmanned spaces and monitoring of machines, which is useful for both normal operations and emergency response.

Teamwork works
Procedure can also help us avoid traps. I try to get all my bridge personnel to name out loud the alarm we are silencing or cancelling. When the annoying beep sounds, it is all too easy to just mash the button that makes it go away, especially when there are repetitive, false or irrelevant alarms. This can lead to ignoring an important alarm. Naming the alarm can alert us to whether there is something that needs to be checked before the alarm is dismissed. Of course, the endless quest to remove nuisance alarms also needs more attention from our friends in the design and regulation parts of the industry.

Even standard Bridge Resource Management (BRM) practices are often under-appreciated aids to maintaining good situational awareness. When the OOW announces what he or she sees, and states his or her planned actions, the whole team shares a mental model that ensures we all have good situational awareness. When the OOW corrects my mistakes, it is because they are checking what I am saying rather than just accepting it. Instinctively checking the response from a helm, engine, or thruster order means we catch a malfunction immediately, instead of when we are already turning into danger.

I believe that the best way to achieve good situational awareness is a team approach. This is partly because individuals have a tendency to see what they expect or want to see, and each of us has our own comfortable areas of focus – acting as a team cancels out these blind spots. That does not relieve any member of the team from keeping the big picture in mind. Even when seafarers operate alone, as is increasingly the case (on the bridge, on deck or in the machinery spaces), we can employ personal techniques such as stopping to scan sensors and surroundings, breaking tasks into smaller intermediate objectives and using appropriate checklists for technically complex tasks. Even setting a simple kitchen timer as a reminder to check on a ballast transfer pump is a useful tool to help us break out of the tendency to get absorbed in other tasks.

Say what you see
When there is no one to check your work, verbalising observations and plans, as you do in BRM, is a good way to remain conscious of what you are going to do. For instance, I was recently bringing a newbuild ship on sea trials into a berth. During the manoeuvre to get the ship lined up for final approach, I was looking astern and to starboard from one corner of the bridge, so I had my Chief Mate looking ahead and to port from across the bridge.

As I manipulated the controls and monitored the way the wind was setting the ship, I reported what I was seeing, doing, and planning through long-established habit even though none of my team could hear me. Noting distances, speeds, and planned actions out loud kept me in the routine of thinking through my cycle of observation, intention, execution and back to observation.

Losing situational awareness can be catastrophic. I have had the experience of being surprised by something that could have been noticed earlier. By adopting good design, policy, and practice we can develop and maintain good situational awareness. That should make those surprises rarer and less severe. Finally, to the old salts who actually remember plotting positions on a chart, good situational awareness is a sign that you have not ‘lost the plot!’