Nippin Anand 0:03
All right, welcome to embracing differences with me. Nippin Anand, the host of this podcast,
siddharth mahajan 1:20
sure. Nippin, great to be here. Now a quick sort of background about myself, and I must point out, this is the first podcast for me ever, so it may not go smooth for me.
siddharth mahajan 1:32
So I’ve been at sea for about 15 odd years, and going back to my very first ship and the first day itself as a cadet, my job was actually to enter hold of a bulk carrier and to sweep the hold of it was discharging coal, you know, and we had to put the remaining coal that we gathered into gunny bag, and then that was lifted up. Now, no one told me at that point. And there were four cadets of us that you are entering a cold that has coal inside, and that it’s an enclosed space. You should carry a gas meter, and so on and so forth. So on. The first ship, we had no idea that enclosed space as a term even existed. Right. Fast forward to the second, again, didn’t know, even though it was a tanker, then came the third shift, and that’s where I sort of came across the risks within closed spaces for the very first time as a cadet. So what happened? A very short story, if I can share that Nippin, and it still sticks with me. There were three of us, three cadets, and the job was on this crude carrier to clean the automatic unloading system separated tank, a very technical sort of term. Or some people who have not sailed on Crude Carriers might not associate with it, but it’s a very small tank, about two, three cubics big, and we had to put a head inside and take the crude out from the bottom and from the sides. And the way we tackled that was by holding our breath for a minute, about 30 seconds, however long that was. And suddenly, between the three of us, all three cadets, you know, in about 19 or 20 years of age, we said, let’s play a game. Who can hold your breath for the longest? And three, four rounds of this, and suddenly one of us, the third cadet, and he was a senior guy, he fell unconscious. He hit his head on the bulkhead behind and the two of us, first time on a VLCC, didn’t know what to do. We ran out of the pump room, and this wasn’t the first level of the pump room. We just ran out. We had no clue what to do. Do we revive him? Do we go up call the chief mate? Do we call the master? We going up the stairs. We went up. And then we thought, guys, we need to call the chief mate. How do we call him? We ran up all the way to the bridge, told the third mate called the chief and the master. And of course, everything was fine after that, and we guys had walkie talkies, it didn’t even occur to us we can use it. Then that’s the time officers explain to us what an enclosed space really is. So yeah, that was, is sort of my personal story, Nippin, I could share with you and the audience and and I think that’s why it is now important that we continue talking about it, because we still seeing fatalities again. As you said, I am not sure if the trend is going up or down, but as far as I know, it’s perhaps steady. It’s not going down at all. And, yeah, I think I’ll leave it at that for now,
Nippin Anand 4:42
wonderful, yeah, I mean wonderful in the sense that, in some ways this was, this was a profound experience that moved you to understand the magnitude of the risk. Yeah, and it was a first hand, direct experience. No, excellent. Thank you. Sud, let’s, let’s move to Kunal and ask the same question.
Kunal 5:10
Yeah. Nippin, so thanks a lot for having us in your podcast. This topic of enclosed space entries is something which has been, I think, the industry topic for a very long time. As you know, we had had discussions with several industry partners to understand what is the magnitude of the issue. Are we gathering the data? Are we seeing more deaths? Are we seeing less? Has anything changed over the years? But having said that, I really don’t know if I can comment on how it is trending, but I can certainly say that every time we get a case of an enclosed space entry death, it’s personal. And I would say this would be for everyone who’s been at sea, who’s worked on ships, it is going to be personal, because somewhere we can all visualize how the events would have unfolded, how things could have been done differently. Trainings could have been done differently. Rescue systems could have been different. So all those emotions, I think, make this topic extremely relevant for not just for us as individuals, but also for industry as a whole. And my personal experience in this has been on different vessels. From time to time. I was very fortunate that we didn’t have an incident as such, but a lot of times we felt that we were close. And I would like to give you an example. This is when I was a chief officer. So by now, I’m well trained, I’m well aware of the risks, and I’m conducting a tank cleaning operations on board an MR. Tanker. We were doing a change of grade. So you know, those of you been working tankers would know that you need to do a thorough sweeping of the car tanks and everything else. This was my first ever tank cleaning operation on a tanker, because I used to be on crew tankers, and we don’t really do tank entries and those on product tankers, it’s it’s more common. The fear when you open the tank lid to enter into the space is very real, especially when you know that you The buck stops with you as a chief mate, that you’ve done all the safety checks you’ve you’ve done all you could to ensure that the tank is ready for man entry. And now the time comes, you will open the lid and you need to enter the dark space. That’s the only entrance. That’s the only exit. There is ventilation in progress. But you can really smell the petroleum fumes. You can smell it up to the bridge as soon as you open it, you can smell it. Your instruments tell you that it could be safe. You’ve done the calibration. The instruments are telling you it’s safe, and now you’ve got your crew next to you who’s going to make a man entry, and you’re the man in charge at that point in time. The fear that hits you is that, what if the person who gets in can’t be taken out? Are we prepared enough to take him out? Do we have the right tools? Do we have the right emergency processes. I think that fear comes to me every time I read about a case of enclosed space entry, death or a nearness. And it makes it a bit personal, because when you have lived through the fear, when you have experienced these situations in the past. And you know, how real it can get, how quickly you tend to feel that maybe this could have been avoided. Maybe things could have been done differently. You know, that’s normal human reaction, I suppose, especially when you have first hand experience on doing things. I seldom find that we there’s any lack in terms of procedures or in terms of the paperwork, I think that’s all intact, and we have developed the whole process around enclosed space entries up to the team, and we are quite thorough with our SMS procedures. But at the same time, I feel that how do those procedures translate into the actual human tendencies or human feelings is very different from what we expect them to be. The procedures don’t address the real fear. The procedures do not address the fact that at some point in time when I’m doing tank entries, one after the other throughout the day for three days, at some point I will make a shortcut. I will normalize the risk. And I’m saying I I’m putting myself in shoes of any. One who has been in charge of the enclosed space entry processes. That is what we really need to understand. I feel that, at what point do we normalize this whole risk? And it doesn’t need to be for tankers. I lost a very dear friend to enclose space incident. This was when I was a cadet, and it was on a sister vessel, but this person had sailed with me in the past, and I feel that when you when you’re working in a enclosed space, it could be a stool space on a bulk carrier or a tank space on a tanker, when you’ve been doing the in and out of the tank frequently throughout the day, at some point you will normalize it. You’ll say, I’ve done this before. Just a couple of hours back, I just went in to have my lunch, and I’m back again. Maybe I don’t need to make those gas measurements again. This tendency is in all of us, the person, the friend that I’m talking about we lost, was very thorough with his work, excellent performer, very safety conscious. But despite all of that, all the level of awareness he had, he couldn’t see this risk coming. The problem, I feel is it’s a lot deeper than what we what meets the eye from the the incident reports that we come across. Because I feel that we are still very much on the surface in trying to understand the problem. And maybe, and I need to blame myself for this, maybe we are a bit too quick to come up with a solution. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s what brings me here and previous discussion that we’ve had on this topic, because I think we need to talk about this, and we need to share our experiences and the real fears and the real human tendencies that we all have. It was
Nippin Anand 12:07
quite interesting listening to both of you talking about your experiences. You know, the kind of things that you have personally experienced and that has kind of you know your fears and and your traumas, if you like, has shaped you, your understanding of the risk of enclosed spaces. How interesting, isn’t it? Because how much of that? Well, let’s talk about how the industry is is addressing this issue. And then we come back to, you know, between what you experience and and how the industry is actually framing the enclosed space risk as a problem. I mean, to just to put, put my own thoughts into it. I am a claustrophobic person, and I have been claustrophobic for many, many years, and the thought of an enclosed space, you know, just scares me. It is. I’m very, very scared. And I, interestingly, I’ve had a podcast with other seafarers who’s who say that they get dreams of enclosed space, enclosed spaces, and as if they have been put inside the space, or they were working in the space. One of them said he was working in the space, and he dreamt that somebody has closed, had closed the lid. And I actually had a case on board a ship where a cadet was locked in the enclosed space. And actually, this gives me shiver, actually, as I speak, he was, he was, he was working in the space. Everyone came out. He was still there, and they just closed the manhole and ordered to fill in the tank.
siddharth mahajan 13:42
So, yeah, I think Nippin, you and I might have sailed on the same ship at some point, or been on the same vessel. It was a four peak tank with the ballasted and the cadet, of course, died.
Nippin Anand 13:57
I think so too. Yeah, it was a very painful steering to remember, but and I want to come back to that, because it has shaped our experiences profoundly as we speak, it gives me a shiver, and I think you also feel the same, both of you. So I want to understand from you, how is the industry framing this as an enclosed space problem? You’ve been through enclosed space training programs. You’re witnessed. You know, after an enclosed space incident, what all precautions and preventions and and so called corrective actions companies are taking? What do you see is the focus of all these initiatives? Or where do you see the problem?
siddharth mahajan 14:42
Okay, so if I can go first Nippin, I think it’s a loaded question. The way we seeing it is, we are still talking about the problem from the same lens as we were 20 years ago. Right? We haven’t, I think, changed that perspective as to why really are these incidents happening again and again for precisely the same reasons. Every report pretty much highlights the same issues. So I think that’s where we are lacking, is seeing the problem differently. Think, let’s give you an example. A chief officer tells a cadet to enter a tank. The cadet enters and he loses consciousness. Now this can be or of this incident will be portrait in a report as non compliance with procedures. Gasses were not tested, permits were not filled, and Cadet lacked training. I mean, the way I now see this problem is more from a cultural lens and a psychological aspect. It’s not so much to do with procedures and hardware. Is a lot to do about the people there, right? Was the cadet given an opportunity in terms of questioning the chief mate? Was he at that stage? Did he even understand what he was being instructed to do? The power dynamics there as well. So a lot of these things, which I don’t think are being discussed often enough, when we talk about enclosed spaces, we’re still very much hardware focused, technical focused, and procedures focused,
Nippin Anand 16:35
absolutely yes. And I think in Yeah, Kunal, what are your thoughts?
Kunal 16:42
Yeah, no, I fully agree with what Siddharth is saying about the human aspect, or you can say the organizational culture, or the shipboard culture, which don’t normally get captured in many of these incident reports. And yes, I also agree that for many years, we have circled around the same issues when it comes to enclosed space and deaths or near misses. I think we end up in talking about the same thing, non compliance with procedures and everything else. When we look at the overall industry problem Nippin, there are different verticals, you can say where we can fit some of these problems. One of the areas that comes up again, again, is lack of know how of certain types of cargoes as an example, where we consider certain cargos to be absolutely safe, and we don’t really need to require the procedures to be followed, or the enclosed space entry procedures to be followed, and all there is just basically, you could say,
Kunal 17:53
non compliance, which is unintentional by the by the ship’s crew before making an entry. So that’s one area, just understanding the cargo. The second aspect, also that comes about again, again, is the inability of the crew to make the rescue in time. There is, in many of these enclosed space incidents, it’s or rather, entries, I would say it’s a one way traffic. Nippin, there is no rescue plan, right? Those who have been rescued, they’ve been very fortunate. And we’ve had some cases where people were rescued and they managed to revive them, which was, I think, nothing short of a miracle. Because, going back to my personal experience, I would say my biggest concern when the crew was entering tanks was, Are we are we going to rescue them? If there’s a problem, do we have enough to rescue them? In most cases, we don’t. So that’s another problem that comes up again, again, industry wide. The third part is that uniformity of training, or awareness, if we call it, you could, you know you can only train up to a certain limit, I suppose, especially when you’re working on bulk carriers. You can train your crew, but can you train all the stevedores before they enter into the cargo spaces? Will they be able to follow the same procedures that the ships apply? Maybe not, and and that sort of imbalance in the knowledge and awareness has led to a few incidents in the past. Now these things the way they’re looked at, whether it has to do with the cargo or the level of training, or just just normal, not having the rescue plan. You could say that these problems have been there from the very start, ever since people have been making these enclosed space entries, but we see that there has been certain progress. As well, as far as awareness of the equipment is concerned, as far as the personal protective equipment is concerned for the crew members. So I feel that there’s been some progress. It’s not gloom and doom all the way through, but it hasn’t really reached a point where we can say that the enclosed space entry incidents are non existent. Now, we haven’t reached that point yet, and that’s that’s where we want to be, because we feel that this, this is a standard practice on board vessels. It needs to be done for whatever reason, maintenance or whole preparation or or inspections, and when we can do better than what, where we are right now, I think that that is the motivation that I have personally, that even though we make progress, but we have some way to go, and we just have to, you know, try and understand these issues better every time we encounter them, so that we can share those lessons, and Not just lessons limited to the procedures, lessons that actually can be shared on a more of a human level, that you know, the people who are actually doing this work can actually apply and remind themselves of where exactly or when exactly are they going to fall over.
Nippin Anand 21:18
Yeah, and, and, I think so this is quite interesting for both from both of you saying, I also recall something very wonderful that Siddharth wrote back to me in one of the emails that I sent after attending that session that we did. And I think, and I think, Kunal, sorry, Siddharth, it will be so good for you to elaborate on that. And I think the thing that hit me very hard when I read your email was that you were with a group of seafarers in that Zoom meeting room that we organized the training. And you made one point. I can’t paraphrase it, but I will try to my very best. But what you experienced was that although the seafarers are not trained to say that I can’t do it, and i or i This is this job, is I can’t refuse the job. I mean, the starting point is that the job needs to be done, and everything else falls. Follows from there. I think that was a very, very good point you made. Can you elaborate on that little bit? Just for the listeners? Absolutely.
siddharth mahajan 22:19
Nippin, sorry, before coming to this question, just going back to your previous problem, or question, rather, where you asked what the problem was. And I’d probably like to admit here and this sort of came to me after attending a course a couple of weeks back, is I think we still are trying to identify the problem. We’re not there yet. That’s something I picked up from sort of a reflection after that course. But, yeah, one of the things that I did notice during the breakout sessions, which were very well organized, I think, and it’s, it was great to see that seafarers were attending this enclosed space course. And it’s not just them, it’s also myself, going back, you know, to my time at sea is we trained to find solutions and do the job. So it’s a can do approach by default. We are told, maybe not directly, it’s not explicit, also implicitly, that you cannot refuse a job or postpone it, or cancel it or defer it, so that option sort of does not exist, starting from the time your day’s work paper is prepared by the chief mate for the person, which is then passed down to the others, right? And that very much, is a process of, this is the job you’ve got to do it, and that’s what I think, going back to my time again at sea, what a toolbox talk was for me, until I gained a bit more experience and went to a few of these industry events. Then I found out, it’s not about giving instructions, it’s more. It’s supposed to be a conversation and a discussion, and people on the lower ranks are to speak more, and it’s not top down. It’s got to be bottom up discussions. So again, just, there’s a lot of ideas that sort of came to my head after that. Course, Nippin, it’s it’ll be very hard to put everything you know probably capture that in this podcast.
Nippin Anand 24:24
Oh yeah, of course, I just wanted to build upon that. And one eye opening moment for me in that, in that session, as I was sitting with a technical manager and a seafarer talking between themselves, technical manager, the manager says that if we, if we have, and I have said this many times to my Seafarer, is that if you have bunkering, if we have cargo operations, we have provisions, we have a class aware on board. I will never allow an enclosed space entry to happen, to which the Seafarer responds that in a port like Singapore or Rotterdam. If I was to follow this advice, I would be fired. I would be fired. I would be sent home. And I find this discussion very fascinating, because it clearly shows that I’m not suggesting one side is right and the other side is wrong, but it clearly suggests a huge mismatch between what we expect from people on board and what they think we expect from them. I think there’s a big noise. And yeah, I think the problem is not just restricted to enclosed spaces. I think this whole idea of speaking your concerns, let’s just talk between us. We are all being seafarers. How many times have we actually spoken our concerns and to whom, when we saw that there was a risk. How many times, I mean, I can tell you, I’ve had situations where I was young officer on board the bridge and the captain, I was repeatedly telling Captain about, Captain, about, you know, some, some few things that I was seeing on the horizon as the ship was approaching Singapore states, and one point he said, Can you please let me concentrate on my work? I have other things to do, and it just shut me up from there. And I think this is, this is a real issue here, that we expect one thing from seafarers, but we fail to understand what it means to, you know, fulfill those expectations, which is to speak up to somebody in position of power and authority, and what happened last time when I actually dared to do that? Isn’t it?
siddharth mahajan 26:34
That’s a good question. I’m sort of thinking, and I see Kunal also in the video, is sort of giving it a thought.
Kunal 26:43
Yeah, I’ve got two conflicting thoughts about this that I might share. One thought is that when we join a vessel, whether it’s whatever type of trade that vessel is in, there are certain risks that come with the job itself, and those risks come because of the purpose of why the vessel is designed. Anand tanker is designed to carry products, petroleum products, and which will change rates from time to time, which means that tank operations and tank cleaning is going to happen at some point in time. That’s the purpose where everyone on board the vessel is employed. Risks, I think, are known to a large extent, both by the crew and also by those who are supervising the job. And if you look at in the broad scheme of things, I suppose a lot of these enclosed space entries happen without any incidents, and they are safe. No one gets harmed. Everything gets under the microscope. When there’s a near miss or an incident. That’s one perspective, the other perspective which I also fully understand. I think I’ve also had that same experience when you are questioning the safety of the whole operation and you’re not fully convinced that the operation that you’re about to conduct is safe, and yet you do it because you know that if you don’t, someone else will come and take your position and do it. That fear is there in, I would say, in every master or a chief officer, you get instructions from the charters that you don’t have five days to carry out this operation. You have three days carry out the entire tanks now. Three days is just about enough to do the basic tank cleaning and not the tank mopping that you require to do. So you start to push the agenda a little bit more, and it all goes downwards from there onwards, as a master, as a chief officer, as a boson, you can question backwards, but what are the consequences? And we all are fairly familiar with the consequences, and we have to also accept the reality of things, how things happen. So when you look at these two, two different pictures, Nippin, we get to find that middle ground where we are still able to follow logical instructions and take those risks, those calculated risks, and perform the job without putting ourselves, without exposing ourselves to the point where we become a data point on ourselves. Easier said than done. Yes, it’s very easy for us to because the fact of the matter is, let’s face it, Nippin, you’re not gonna do this in close place entry ever again. Neither me or Siddharth, we are sitting here now the office and. We are imagining some problems and solutions for us, it’s easy to say whether it’s a big problem or small problem, but when you are on board the vessel, then it’s a job. I think closed space entry is a job, just like hot work, just like working on heights, working oversight. It’s a job.
Nippin Anand 30:24
Yeah, yeah. And let’s Siddharth, you want to say something I
siddharth mahajan 30:28
know, yeah. Nippin sort of agree with Kunal. I think he mentioned this word, we imagining how the work is perhaps done. I think that is that, in itself, highlights a gap in terms of how work is actually carried out. But I also wanted to add is, you know, when someone speaks up on board, again, sitting from our seat, we can see it. It sets in motion a chain of events, for example, taking again, the case you, you had for us during the course in the breakout where we had inspection of tanks. Class survey is coming. He’s been appointed, and the ship’s not ready. The crew is not ready because there’s just too much going on. You know, if someone says no to the mate, the mate has to tell the master, the Master’s got to call the superintendent. He’s got to cancel the class surveyor. They’ve got to call probably the owner, higher up, you know, the fleet technical head. And therefore the job may be the next port. And if the window of getting that survey done is is sort of expiring, then that will have an impact in your certificates and then your trading patterns. So there’s this whole chain of events that would be set into motion, right? And people are sort of afraid to take that call, and hence we do sort of come under that pressure, explicit or implicit, and end up finding ways to complete the task.
Nippin Anand 31:55
Yeah, and I’ll just bring bring this together, if it’s okay, if it both of you, and I think we have spent a lot of good time have some great discussions. But let’s start off with the second one before I come to what Kunal said was the first problem. The second problem is that we all know, if you are a Filipino, an Indonesian, or somebody from you know, the dominant maritime labor supplying countries which which are still by and large in the Southeast Asia, you are mostly employed by a third party Manning company. And for those people who are not you know, who are not familiar with this language, these are, there are dedicated companies that are supplying labor to shipping companies, and they, most of the times, are on contractual agreements. So they are, these are temporary workers on contractual agreements. And even if you were to employ somebody directly, there is a very good chance that people who work in such precarious labor conditions will always have difficulty speaking of, let’s not take that away. So on top of, on top of that, when we realize that you know power and authority, you mentioned the word power dynamics is so embedded in this hierarchical culture, yet we have no tools, no methods at all, who tackle the risk at that level. All our risk management is at a very operational level. It actually talks a very mechanical language. There is nothing that touches upon the politics and the ethics of risk. You know, we did a little exercise. You remember the language audit, and the only words that that filtered through were the words of the senior people in the room. That clearly tells me that there is a problem that we don’t even acknowledge the words of people, forget about their concerns. We don’t even see their words. And my point is this, that why are we not bringing tools and methods like this in risk management? The second point is, yes, I totally agree that a boson or a chief will not speak to the chief officer, a cadet will not talk to the captain. We all know that. But the interesting thing is that if you take that away and take one step back, why is it that during audits and investigations, we are not highlighting these issues and we flow with the power and authority, you have an enclosed space incident, and the first person you go and speak with is the ship’s captain. And what does the ship captain know about enclosed spaces and going inside those spaces and working inside? Why does a surveyor, an inspector, an auditor, not go directly and speak with the AB or the Boson or the cadet? And so, in a way, what I’m saying is this that power and authority is reinstated, it’s either absent or reinstated through our methods and tools. I think that’s that’s something we need to think about. Why are we not addressing these issues? If you’re not able to address this firsthand during you know which is, which is a wishful thinking given the hierarchical structure of the industry. We. Should do something about it at another level, but we are totally absent there, both as part of our internal governance, but also as part of you know what the external parties, like flag states and classification societies are doing. They’re just reinforcing the status quo. That’s that’s one thought I wanted to leave you with. The second thought I wanted to leave you with was this that, you know, we started off by talking about personal experiences. You know, Kunal, you use the word everything is personal. Every incident is unique and personal. And Siddharth, you told a wonderful story about, you know how that in the third ship, you were hit so hard by seeing what you saw, you know, a cadet just sticking their head, you know, just above, just below, the time the manhole and falling flat from there, and how it hit you so hard. I think those are very important lessons to learn, because both of you have learned through trauma, through first hand, anxiety, distress, the emotion of fear that still sits in you and yet, and that’s the most powerful form of learning from any incident. And yet, we fall back into top down, bulletins, safety alerts, flashes and so on, which have no connection with her, and it’s in such a mechanical language and often telling people what to do, why don’t we bring these stories to the surface? I mean, I don’t. I have not seen a single Seafarer that includes me who has not been traumatized by these by these stories, either firsthand or by listening to their colleagues and friends on ships. So there are so many stories, there’s no dearth of stories at all. And yet we fall back on same political instruments like safety alerts and so on, make people sign them towards the end, as if signing means that it’s gone in their heart and their bodies, and they have actually embraced it, and we all know that’s wishful thinking, so I think there is something fundamentally wrong in the way we are approaching risk management within this industry, and I think that’s that’s a problem, and we need to talk about this more. And this is why I thought it would be wonderful to have both of you, because you are both seasoned mariners, but much more than that, what do you what do you say to that?
Kunal 37:37
I quite agree with you in evidence, and you know that the whole effect of safety bullet and everything else, I would also like to add to your point that there has been progress. Some of these strategies that the industry has used to share lessons learned. Have had some level of success. It’s not 100% we’re not there yet, but we have created a level of awareness through various industry partners, industry bodies to be able to bring out processes and procedures which can be applied at scale. It’s important we acknowledge that. It’s really important that some bits of those stories have translated into actual procedures and actual science, which we must acknowledge. It’s it’s not gotten us free from this risk altogether, because it’s still there. New seafarers are coming in. Different countries are supplying labor now than it used to be 10 years ago. Things have changed a lot in the industry as well. So we have to also at least be kind to ourselves, because we are part of the same industry, and our efforts have definitely won some fruits. Yes, our personal reflections on whenever we read an incident report, it generates emotions without it, or anyone who’s been at sea, and in fact, even not just those who’ve been at sea, even those who handle claims here, even for them, it’s a very sensitive subject, and they want to know what they can do to make a difference. So when you are in that kind of a setup, I think we have to count on the small wins that we’ve had so far as an industry. I think we have come a long way to address some of the key issues that that were big at one point in time, and they’re almost non existent now. And I will say the same thing for enclosed space entries as well. We do see incidents from time time and guard, but I would not say that we have the kind of scale that we can say that it’s a growing problem, or it’s it’s. None of our safety measures have really resulted in any positive outcome. It’s just about us understanding what has worked well and what is it that we can do more often? If there’s something that I would leave with this podcast with, it’s just that idea that there is progress happening. There is that there is awareness, which we all are working towards. Your podcast is going to act as one of those as well, as much as we can work towards raising the awareness, I think we, from our perspective, are contributing to finding the right solution. Absolutely.
siddharth mahajan 40:35
Nippin, is it okay to add on? Sort of, I think 100% sort of agree with Kunal, a lot of changes have been introduced over the past few years to bring down the rate of fatalities. Now looking at the industry, and by industry, I mean just the guard membership, yes, there are members who have been able to manage this risk very well, right? And again, why is it that they’ve been able to manage the risks versus those who are having fatalities? It’s difficult to say. One can say yes, they’ve got very good procedures, training mechanisms in place. They’ve got seafarers who are loyal and stay with them for a long time, good systems. But I also feel it has something to do with culture. They’ve perhaps gotten it right, right? They do have a workforce who is able to have a conversation openly, on board ships or in the office about these risks. Juniors are able to challenge the seniors, the superiors, right? I think you mentioned speaking up and power dynamics. I think they’ve been able to manage that power dynamic somehow, somewhere, by measuring it and then working on it. And if I can just mention it’s not marketing, but I think it’s important to mention that God has embarked on this journey as well and and by helping our clients assess their culture, you know, where are they in terms of speaking up? It’s okay to have that as a procedure, but it’s another thing to understand. Are your people really feeling empowered to say, No, I cannot enter this enclosed space? You
Nippin Anand 42:23
Yeah, I think we, we should, we should bring it together. I think that’s, that’s, that’s a good, good point that you do see some progress within the industry, and there are some mature, let’s say, for the lack of a better word, players in the industry that are, that are making things better? See, the thing that I would, I would leave the listeners with, is a very simple question that our methods, mostly in risk and safety, are, by and large, very mechanical. It’s, it’s very, very engineering focused. In fact, all risk methodologies come from stem, which is science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And yes, it is important to acknowledge that there is some progress that can be made through along those lines. But you have to really think about the idea of power and relationships and ethics and authority and culture and learning and so on, which is not mechanistic and it cannot be measured through that language. It is, it is highly problematic to measure any of that. And if we start off by saying that every incident is unique, every situation is unique, and there are feelings involved. There are emotions involved. And I think we need to also acknowledge that our methods lack all of that. They’re not. They’re not. I mean, you can have a very good chief officer, you can have a very good company that gives people, goes beyond that. But if you do not have a methodology that, from that actually accepts the holistic nature of life, which is psychological, cultural and mechanical, all three. I think we will always, we will always lack that part. I think that’s, that’s the bit that I really want people to think about. You know, you can make Nippin. Is it
siddharth mahajan 44:19
okay to ask you a question? And so like, you know, because you mentioned risk methodology, you know, looking at risk assessments that at least I felt during my time at sea. All of them were really neat. You know, standard templates, printed, filed and signed by everyone who was involved in the job, but again, they were focused on the technical aspects, the procedural and the hardware. So the way I understand now is it’s important to capture that honest dialog, you know, which can be messy at times that people have before a job is undertaken. So how do you sort of capture that? It on that piece of paper, because you would need it at some point for, let’s say, audits.
Nippin Anand 45:06
Yes, I think even before we want to capture that, long before you want to capture something, you have to even you know, you have to acknowledge its importance. You have to acknowledge what it means to be a human being. The the idea of capturing only comes after that. I would like list the listeners to know that, you know Kunal spoke, spoke about normalization, and he also spoke about seafarers know it, and that there are risks, and there are managers that know that there are risks, and there’s a lot of emphasis on the word knowing. But what does knowing mean? A lot of knowing is very tacit. Siddharth, you and me and Kunal have been you know, we have been discussing these issues for a while, and I think there is a level of trust between us that when I say something, you will respect what I say, and when you say something, I will take it very seriously. There is a lot of knowing there. There’s a lot of unknowing, which is not explicit, it’s implicit. It’s unconscious. All of it is unconscious. You know me saying something and you smiling and nodding, is unconscious. I cannot put it on a piece of paper. It’s there. We can both feel it, it’s there, and we also know when it goes away, when it’s not there, you will be looking elsewhere, or you’ll be totally disinterested in this podcast. The fact that there is a level of engagement here which cannot be measured is already part of that unconscious. My point is this, that if your methods and tools, when you do your risk assessments are so mechanistic that they only go from left to right. This is the funny bit. They only go from left to right or from top to bottom. We have a problem, because what they are telling me is that you already have submitted to a particular way of seeing the risk, which is going from left to right, like the domino effect. You know, one after another, after another, after another, after another. But you think about it, there is no cause and effect when an AB who is in a this is a very personal story, when an AB is so ambitious, he’s made some promises back home to his mother that he will not come home and bring shame to the family. And then he comes on board and he commits to something which is totally dangerous, unsafe to all of us sitting over here, how do you put that into a cause and effect map? You cannot, you cannot. So this is where our methods and models fall flat. When I was a class aware with DNV, I used to do a very simple exercise to answer your question. I would just give people a plain, a four sheet, and ask them. A group of seafarers asked them to draw a flow chart, draw a figure, draw whatever you want, and tell me how you would do this work. And funny enough, they would all come up with their own description. And what they are doing is they are giving me their knowing, their know how, on a piece of paper that they cannot articulate on a checklist which goes from left to right or top to bottom, or a template which is prepared by the office 5000 miles away. So there is something fundamentally wrong in the way we are doing risk assessments by denying the unconscious nature of the risk that lives within us and that needs to be surfaced. And this is why I give so much importance to visual methods like a whiteboard. Get a group of people in the room, five, six people, tell one person to map the risk while others are talking what you’re doing by capturing that conversation is drawing from their know how, which they are not explicitly, unconsciously aware of. I mean, we have to just ask a simple question, if 98% of the decisions are made in the unconscious mind, which is a fact when you cannot deny, how on earth can we use a mechanical template to talk about risk? Now this is not to degrade the importance of those risk assessments and checklists. They are very important. But there’s something else that is needed to complement it, which is which is missing today, to answer your question, and that is surfacing the unconscious nature of risk that people normalize and carry with them, as abs, as troubled people, as traumatized people, are something they have learned to experience in their lives, which does not is never captured in that, in that, in that mechanistic, automatic exercise, until we come to terms with the unconscious nature of risk, there’s no way we will. We will go to the next step. And I think you’re both right. We have made a lot of progress, but to get to the next level, we need to rethink our belief systems, and this is what I think is fundamentally missing here. Sorry, that was a long rant, but it was needed because you asked the
Kunal 49:56
question, absolutely. Nippin, excellent points. I. This conversation can go on for another hour, and I would have, I mean, I think I’m hooked listening to you actually, just about how you see the human perspective. But I need to leave, unfortunately, to get somewhere, and we’ll meet again next week.
Nippin Anand 50:21
Yes, we will, and I just wanted to thank both of you for your generosity and your time. I will. So thank you, and I hope you enjoyed the session.
