Hot work near-miss could have been a bomb

<!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; mar­gin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>

Marine Safety Forum’s lat­est alert tells of a near miss involv­ing hot­work that had the poten­tial for seri­ous dam­age to the ship and injury to its crew. It’s the sort of inci­dent that hap­pens uncom­fort­ably often and which usu­ally goes unre­ported. In this case the ves­sel was involved in off­shore indus­try, which tends to be more will­ing to spread the lessons learned.

Says the MSF alert: “Upon com­ple­tion of demo­bil­i­sa­tion from one project and mobil­i­sa­tion to another, the Chief Offi­cer inspected the deck of the ves­sel and noticed that some project equip­ment, which had not been included on the approved deck lay­out plan, had been secured to the deck by pad-eyes that had been welded into posi­tion. One of which was welded to the deck above a fuel tank.

“The per­sons car­ry­ing out the weld­ing had obtained a per­mit to work but insuf­fi­cient super­vi­sion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and man­age­ment of change pro­ce­dures resulted in the pad eye being welded above the fuel tank.

“Although the deck above the fuel tank had been marked as a “no weld zone” these mark­ings had become faded but not totally obscured, due to project equip­ment being stored on top of the fuel tank. Avail­able ships infor­ma­tion was not con­sulted prior to the weld­ing oper­a­tion commencing.

“Rec­om­men­da­tions

Effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion between con­trac­tors work­ing on behalf of the char­terer and the ships crew should be estab­lished to ensure that haz­ardous activ­i­ties are suit­ably con­trolled to mit­i­gate risk.

Any changes to deck lay­out plans should be relayed for approval to the Mas­ter or Chief Officer.

Per­mit to work should be metic­u­lously com­pleted and cover the intended operation.

Any change to approved mobil­i­sa­tion / demo­bil­i­sa­tion plans should be reassessed by thor­ough man­age­ment of change procedures.

Fire watches should be prop­erly con­ducted and the fire watch­man should be informed and sat­isfy them­selves as to when and where hot­work is tak­ing place.

The last line of defence, i.e. the deck mark­ings, had become faint over time and should there­fore be reg­u­larly checked and re-marked as nec­es­sary. If in any doubt ships Offi­cers should be con­sulted con­cern­ing safe areas on deck for hot­work prior to oper­a­tions commencing.

Could it hap­pen on your ship?