Offshore Safety: Maersk’s Global Standards

Chris Bailey, managing director of Maersk Supply Service in Canada, maintains a clear focus on safety. Always.

“Safety is a core value for the entire company. We make a very conscious effort to improve our daily safety, because working offshore can be challenging. Furthermore, we operate in a part of the world where weather conditions are as rough as it gets,” says Bailey, who recently returned to Canada after several years with postings for Maersk offshore companies abroad.

Over the past years, Maersk Supply Service has focused on safety and successfully launched numerous initiatives, aimed at improving safety in day-to-day business. Some initiatives are tailor-made for the demanding work offshore, where the extreme weather in winter can be frigid, wet, and windy, with high seas and seven- to eight-meter waves constantly keeping the vessel in motion. The combination of the tough weather and the tasks of moving huge rigs or even icebergs, plus anchor handling, are all challenging factors to ensuring a safe working environment. Due to these risk factors, the biggest efforts reside in training the people who run the operations, ensuring that they all have the right skills, the right mindset, and a safe working environment.

Maersk Training Center, Svendborg, Denmark

In 2012, all seafarers spent four days in training with a focus on improvement within safety. The number of days is being rapidly expanded with the aim to reach an average of six days training for each seafarer in the Maersk Supply Service fleet in Canada.

“A major challenge is the cultural change in the industry,” says Bailey. Risks were not the focus years ago, but rather it was on how best to perform the task. “Now I am proud to lead a company where we have the most experienced people and a high safety culture.”

To facilitate some of the training, a lot of courses are conducted in the dedicated Maersk Training Center in Svendborg, Denmark. The center is equipped with the most advanced simulators, enabling training and drills in the most difficult situations as close to real life as possible.

Any task, major or routine, is initiated with a risk assessment and a “toolbox talk” among the team. A general policy is that all employees can, and shall, stop any action if they deem it unsafe. Potential risks are discussed and the safest solutions are applied. All data related to safety and operational tasks is collected in one safety management system, creating a valuable database with leading indicators that portray the efficiency of various tools and provide an overview of strengths and weaknesses.

Global Safety

A strong and proactive tool is the global “Time Out for Safety.” Frequently, all the onshore people in six different offices and on five continents, the entire fleet, are requested to stop their normal work and take out one hour to talk about safety and reflect on a safety-related matter.

Maersk Supply Service meticulously measures all safety performance and, with eight consecutive months without one single LTI in the entire fleet of 65 vessels, the many safety initiatives are proving very effective.

“Safety is my responsibility, and I do what I can to “walk the talk.” We must instill safety first before anything else, and ensure we never become complacent about it,” says Chris Bailey.