Portfolio

[Unregistered]

So was just wondering how everyone who joined in Sept 2010 was getting on with there Portfolio???
I feel I have written loads as they say you have to keep a daily log, is this correct??? I am on cruise so I'm in and out of ports daily.
Furthermore, hows people getting on with the maintenance I am worried as on my ship they leave it to the AB Seamen and when I ask to do it they're like NO! What to do???

[Brimbo]

Your aim should be to get around half of it done, at least for your first sea phase. A daily log is apparently a great help to your oral assessment in the end, there was a lot of confusion with our portfolio's before we went to sea, so I kept a daily log of everything I did, photo's etc, turned out it wasn't really necessary but its a bonus to have if you've been making them, keep doing so if you feel you want too.

[size4riggerboots]

Talk to your ship training officer, if need be, take your TRB and point out the section that says you know how to do all the various bits of maintenance. If you're in your first phase so you should really be spending a few months on deck, working with the ABs and petty officers, doing maintenance and checks on lifeboats, fire extinguishers, fire hoses, paintwork etc etc, if you're not getting this experience now then you might find you have problems later.

A daily log is a great way to remember all the stuff you did, when I got to the bridge I kept my nav work book daily, but for the non bridge stuff it really helped when it came to writing reports too. And take LOTS of photos!! When I got back from my first phase my ops workbook was a big lever arch file, full. My coursemates thought I'd taken it a bit far, but I have a solid body of work that backs up all the signatures in my TRB, and when I need to remember how to do something, I can just go back and look it up.

[Steve]

Back in the day, the portfolio was assessed for your VQ. Who looks at it now and what is it used for? Is it assessed as part of the HND/FD/PD/JCB?

[size4riggerboots]

In the TRB there are no set tasks like there are/were in the HND portfolio, you are told to keep a nav and ops workbook though. In that you should write up things you do and see as evidence to back up the signatures you get in your TRB, it is assessed by the college and then by the MCA when you go for Orals. I keep my nav workbook as a handwritten book, with pics and print outs glued in. My ops work book is all done on computer, also with lots of pics. In the folder it's broken down into sections i.e. drills, cargo work, safety etc. A lot of it can be duplicated into another folder for Work Based Learning, which is assessed by the college only.

[Steve]

Sounds much more complicated. The key with the old VQ portfolio (portfolio not for HND, you needed both and the VQ reduced the seatime requirement IIRC) was to keep the reports short and sweet or the assessor would get pissed off at having too much to read. I saw some real OTT work going into VQ portfolios! "Here's my PhD level portfolio..." If there are no set tasks now, what are the signatures for?

[size4riggerboots]

When I said tasks, I meant reports, you still have to do all the stuff, but there are no set reports, the signatures are for the tasks themselves, you get signed off as progressing and then proficient.

[Chiefy]

Yeah, finally got a cadet to sit me down and explain it all to me, no one ever thinks to teach the teachers whats new and shiny in your various and assorted portfolio / trb / thingies

but dont get me started

[CharlieDelta]

Am I alone in thinking how poorly laid out the TRB is? There's about five or six "Relieve and handover the watch in accordance with laid down practices and proceudres...". They're meant to be for different things but it's very poorly explained. That and the fact that different officers will have very different optinions as to what constitutes progressing and proficient etc etc...

[ETwhat?]

Having looked at the MNTB web site at some point there is a info download for the officers and yeah it would make sense if that was sent to companies before the cadet arrived.

one big area of confusion seems to be that you get reports to write, which make up a college module and have nothing to do with the TRB, the TRB requries just signatures however for most of it you should also be keeping a Workbook which shows the thinking thats going into your day to day activities not quite a dairy but almost, for drills and stuff these then become mini reports what when why who etc but not the big long and boring parts that would go into a formal report.
My understanding is that the workbook creates the evidence that you are proficient in a task that is then being signed off in the TRB. there is some guidance ont he workbook at the back of the TRB which should help and for any reports given by the college ask them.

the other area of confusion is that officers who did reports expect current cadets to still be doing them too, and this will happen until were siging off stuff and the system changes again.

[ETwhat?]

Proficient is layed down as 'can complete the task with only minimum supervision' and progressing is 'not proficient needs further practice' so basically the first time you do anything your progressing,

[CharlieDelta]

In practice though, things are different from person to person. Standards vary quite a bit.

[ETwhat?]

yeah, well im having a half day today as my ETO's are changing over and theres a slight gap with not much to do, hopefully the new one feels more inclined to tackle the TRB than the last one

[Steve]

When I said tasks, I meant reports, you still have to do all the stuff, but there are no set reports, the signatures are for the tasks themselves, you get signed off as progressing and then proficient.

That sounds more like what I saw the last time I was given a cadet to play with.

[dawg]

I'll throw in the engine angle...
I keep a diary, which i use to make my monthly reports, to summarise what i did for each day... just a sentence.
I made a little word doc for each task, and type some stuff up about what I've learnt about each one, and insert my photos, so they are kind like a cross between wiki articles and user manuals.
I did this because one non-UK Junior Engineer (=5th eng) showed me his TRB, and he seemed to say that he only got signed off as proficient once he'd written something up.
I use more of a consistent template and put more in than he did, because the college has given us these 5 poxy "mini-reports", which are not especially clear, despite the great rigmarole of making us write a "Programme of Study", that they seemed to think the C/E would be fascinated to read. They also seemed to think that the 2/E would be leaping out of his chair to engage with their literature and hold weekly sessions to assess my progress and sign. The college side of things seems rather detached from reality, on a working ship, your stuff is slightly meaningless and a bit irrelevant to them... especially if they come from eastern europe or the subcontinent (two evidently different styles of doing things).

What I ended up doing is getting hold of the Planned Maintenance schedule and "interviewing" EOOWs and EEOs when I could to confirm which MNTB tasks they kind of fell into the closest (or rather what would I have to do to get a sig'), and then I enter myself into the Work Plan, and whatever risk assessments and PTWs can get sorted out, and I can start fetching rags and passing spanners.
The college reports are a complete nuisance... I mean writing up a little report on each task is really useful because by the time you've researched and "interviewed" people and edited the right photos in, and had a go, you really feel like you've learnt something; but the college "mini-reports" seem to be a weird combination of totally vague and highly prescriptive... e.g.: you had to copy out some wording verbatim to get marks for some parts of it, whereas if you read up and understood it and rewrote it in proper English, you'd lose marks - utterly stupid, timekilling toss.
So, in the end, I've decided to just use my little TRB reports to assemble the reports for the college, but it's the fact that the TRB reports (which AFAIK are my own invention) are genuinely useful because they explain exactly what you have to know and do within the boundaries of each task, not the college reports which are contrived and seem like a fifth wheel to have to do at the same time, as they're disconnected from the TRB, yet seem to be trying to do the same thing.
...and when I say "diary", think more of a rough lab-book or notebook than some carefully-written toime... you don't always have the time or energy to do it every day, just try and remember what you did last week and jot it down roughly, but the real info is more carefully and detailed-ly presented in these "TRB task summaries" (for want of a better term)... you can see how irrelevant and "bolt-on" it is when the college then says, "oh and write a short essay about steering gear", when there's only a couple of books that aren't the best written or up-to-date in the world... it's the "TRB task summary" that I write about what I actuallly did with and understand about the steering gear in relation to the tasks in the TRB that is where the learning, and useful info is... these "mini-reports" are just extra and to me, unnecessary, extra stress.