OPERATIONS & PERSONAL SAFETY IN DRY DOCKS & REPAIR YARDS

During a ship's normal operating cycle all operations take place in accordance with the company's safety systems and operating procedures. These guidelines are familiar to all on board. The ship is both a home and workplace and as such becomes familiar to all that serve there.

This video and supporting print set out to describe and illustrate how different this comfortable familiarity becomes when a ship enters a dry-dock or repair yard. There, parts of the ship may disappear, a hundred or more people may invade her. Tools, materials, cables, pipes and unfamiliar installations may litter the deck and the normally free access routes. Most important of all, in a ship-yard, safe working practices are governed not by the ship's familiar safety systems but by those of the shipyard. To this end co-ordination of all work practices, and all safety issues are controlled by a joint safety committee.

All these components mean new hazards and new sources of danger, requiring extra care and vigilance from every-one on board.

The package goes through some of the main processes involved in entering a dry dock, controlling and co-ordinating safe working practices and showing the many different situations which can arise; each of which can represent a threat to safety. Although the video features a number of different types of vessels from passenger ship to crude oil tanker, a typical story is told. This starts with the vessel approaching a dry dock and shows the preparation of the ship and personnel for entry, through a range of typical jobs being carried out on deck, in the engine room and on the superstructure. Finally equipment and alarm testing is shown prior to departure.