How many officers need to be trained to use ECDIS safely? There’s no punch line because it’s actually a pretty serious question. For the last couple of years plenty of people have grappled with it and generally failed to come to a conclusion.
Something like a consensus is slowly emerging but there is a significant spread between the estimates we have been able to gather.
At the recent ECDIS Revolution conference, we caught up with Nautical Institute ECDIS guru Harry Gale for his estimate.
Gale reckoned that the need might be as high as six officers per ship, assuming three on and three off multiplied by 40,000 SOLAS ships. Assuming some training already done and variations for ship size and that’s still well north of 200,000.
Later in the conference, Ulf Steden of ECDIS training provider Safebridge put the number of SOLAS ships closer to 47,833 and assuming three officers per ship, estimated just shy of 150,000 officers to be trained.
Right in the middle is Admiralty’s own unofficial assessment, which takes the IMO’s estimate of 54,897 merchant ships and multiplying by three (master, chief officer/chief mate and second officer/second mate) arrives at a little over 160,000 officers requiring training.
This is still a very blunt measurement – some smaller ships only have a master and chief mate, while the bigger ships have third officers/third mates.
But the issue is in many ways more about supply of training places than the demand itself. ECDIS Revolution heard plenty of debate as to whether training itself needs much better oversight, certification or even regulation.
It’s not unusual to hear of the five-day IMO course conducted in two or three days with a certificate issued on completion. Computer-based training is being used as a stopgap but some professional bodies are concerned that it is being used as a substitute for classroom time.
Much of the same is true for type-specific training, with the concern that completing the IMO course on specific equipment might be counted as familiarisation or type-specific training too, further limiting the time seafarers get on equipment before they get on board.
Indeed, one of the take-aways from ECDIS Revolution was whether there should be closer checks of the course content of generic training to ensure all teaching establishments are setting the same high standard, with new regulation if necessary.
The thought of more regulation might make readers recoil but if the IMO five-day, 40-hour course really is being completed and signed-off in two or three days then all training facilities are far from being equal.
Training is clearly a challenging issue for the industry. Perhaps you have a better understanding of the number of officers needing training, or an opinion around the quality and availability of ECDIS training courses?
By Neville Smith
Tags: ECDIS, ECDIS Revolution, Nautical Institute, training
