Sunday, May 31, 2009

Sharing of my experience for working in a Shipyard as a HSE Officer

As mentioned before, my first career as a Safety Officer is working at a Shipyard (no mention of which). I would say the shipyard has a very comprehensive Safety Management System. Almost 95% of the risk assessment (RA) for works being conducted regularly had been covered. Perhaps the other 5% will be special or extraordinary works that rarely been done in the yard. Although the yard has a very detailed training for all new employee, you still need to work on the vessel to really know what the books are talking about. Some of the very simple yet difficult habit to change is to understand that the usual terms we use daily will be changed. For instant, the left & right is called Port & Starboard respectively. If you gonna tell or ask people where right & left is, immediately they know you are a newbie. Even the Indians or Bangladesh knows where Port & Starboard is. Another great obstacles to hop over is to know each & every individual name for the area of the vessel. Example, Forecastle Deck is the forward top-deck where the anchor winches are.... It's really a mouth-full. Serious. That's is mine very first & most difficulty obstacles that took me a few months of daily working (and been laugh at for making silly mistakes) to strengthen my vessel vocab.

Teamwork with the seniors Fire Fighters Supervisors are equally important without doubts. I learn hills of knowledge from them as well. I learned that there are some jobs that aren't that simple as they look like. You can't ignore them too. Safety First. Remember that by hard. There will be time when even though you are resting at home, suddenly, a thought on hot work or major work comes in your mind & you will become very restless. You wish you are in the yard instantly to oversee the whole process. You will have that uncertain feeling. Only to wish that everything is peaceful when you return to yard the next morning. And when you return to work the next morning & see that everything is peaceful, you will feel so glad & lucky. Well, you sure will promise yourself that you will conduct 100% check the next time. (*grinning*) Anyway, that's the kind of pressure you will getting & experiencing.

In total, I'd been on a total of 16 repair vessels during my 9 months stay in that shipyard. 3 of them are Maersk Line. They are the most tiring vessels as the owner / Captain are stingy. They don't allow us to use the lift. (For your infor, all Maersk Line Container Vessel are at least 15 storey high from Engine bottom to the monkey ladder) So I climb the stairs till me knees pain like shit. Well, that was that. Was fun yet physically shack-out!

In summary, working in a shipyard definitely have the fast practical learning cutting edge. Thru the fast pace in the yard, you learn fast too. The other plus point will be the bonus. Very lucrative. The dark side is, you work like there's no weekend, no rest day, no free time. If you are one who are very anti-social, no friends, play PC everyday... This career may be just nice for you. If you are thinking about working in a shipyard & got other question to ask, feel free to email to me. I'll try my best to answer. Have a great weekend! Cheers!!!

3 comments:

  1. Hi there,

    I'm totally new in the safety industry and was doing some research for my assignment. Happen to come across your blog, find it quite interesting. I have some questions for shipyard industry and wonder whether you can help me along?

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  2. Hi I was wondering to calculate number of lost days . given 1 accidents. No of man hours worked 410,000.

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