DP ships routine

[DPott]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could help me with a quick question about work routine's and rota's on DP ship like a DSV or cable layer etc?
What is it like doing 12 hr's on/off etc?


Many Thanks

[AlternativeNavs]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could help me with a quick question about work routine's and rota's on DP ship like a DSV or cable layer etc?
What is it like doing 12 hr's on/off etc?


Many Thanks

From my experience 12 hour shifts when 'operational' on site are a fairly relaxed affair. The four DPO's worked 12 hour shifts in an offset rotation i.e 0000-1200,1200-0000,0600-1800 & 1800-0600. Obviously working the 1200-0000 shift worked best for living/sleeping, although the 1800-0600 was the quietest. It appears that even when you work a 24 hour operation, things slow down at night.

You don't really have much time to do much else in your 12 hours off apart from sleep (and eat if you miss a meal outside of your watch). That being said, work routines still needed to be carried out if you didn't have the luxury of extra people to assist with such. Some companies employ DPO's to just operate the equipment, some just use their existing Deck staff as DPO's which means you will have to plan in the maintenance tasks.

[marlinspike]

From my experience 12 hour shifts when 'operational' on site are a fairly relaxed affair. The four DPO's worked 12 hour shifts in an offset rotation i.e 0000-1200,1200-0000,0600-1800 & 1800-0600. Obviously working the 1200-0000 shift worked best for living/sleeping, although the 1800-0600 was the quietest. It appears that even when you work a 24 hour operation, things slow down at night.

You don't really have much time to do much else in your 12 hours off apart from sleep (and eat if you miss a meal outside of your watch). That being said, work routines still needed to be carried out if you didn't have the luxury of extra people to assist with such. Some companies employ DPO's to just operate the equipment, some just use their existing Deck staff as DPO's which means you will have to plan in the maintenance tasks.

So if you have to spend 12 hours per day on the bridge, your then expected to go and do safety jobs bringing a days work up to 13-15 hour days? That sounds like ****.

I think it is foolish of companies to get their deck officers to do 12 hours a day on the bridge then expect them to go and do safety checks thoughtfully and accurately in the time outside of that. Even worse would be having to do safety checks on 6 on/off bridge watch pattern, doing it when 12 on/off would be barely tolerable, but still *****. Ships should be manned in such a way whereby the mates can do their bridge watch and safety checks in ample time within a daily 12 hour period.

It is a huge risk to the safety of a vessel having fatigued officers going out and doing safety checks, it may not be done properly due to the crew member just rushing through them in a hurry so they can go and sleep.

[Clanky]

So if you have to spend 12 hours per day on the bridge, your then expected to go and do safety jobs bringing a days work up to 13-15 hour days? That sounds like ****.

I think it is foolish of companies to get their deck officers to do 12 hours a day on the bridge then expect them to go and do safety checks thoughtfully and accurately in the time outside of that. Even worse would be having to do safety checks on 6 on/off bridge watch pattern, doing it when 12 on/off would be barely tolerable, but still *****. Ships should be manned in such a way whereby the mates can do their bridge watch and safety checks in ample time within a daily 12 hour period.

It is a huge risk to the safety of a vessel having fatigued officers going out and doing safety checks, it may not be done properly due to the crew member just rushing through them in a hurry so they can go and sleep.

All absolute spot on, however, the reality is that while there are companies on the market with small crewd and lower charter rates, the lowest common denominator will win every time.

Oil companies will preach about zero incident zero accident cultures all day, but they will still charter the cheapest boat.

[cableguy]

Hi,

My experience of this has been pretty good to be honest. All the DP ship's that I have worked on fall in to the following two categories: -


4 Deck Officers/DPOs and 1 Master - Master will take 2 or 3 hours of DP watch every two or three days, freeing up the deck officers to go do routines during their 12 hour shift.


5 Deck Officers/DPOs and 1 Master - 1 of the deck officers will be a Junior DPO (normally only completed DP induction, or on one occasion has done DP simulator) and he/she will do the majority of routines, with roughly 6 hours routines and 6 hours DP watch per day. Depending on the contract requirements, during the JDPO's 6 hour DP watch another officer may be able to leave the bridge to do other routines. In addition the navigating officer will be able to carry out bridge routines whilst on DP watch and the C/O can do a lot of the paperwork when on DP watch too, depending of course on nature of operation etc.

On cable repair ships it used to be the norm that one of the DPOs on watch, normally the C/O and 2/O, would run the deck as well, in which case the 3/O on watch would be the only DPO on the bridge, except during highly critical parts of the operation, when the master would also be present. This was the case only a few years ago, but the practice may have changed as I have not sailed in a cable ship outside of windfarms, where normal oil and gas rules apply, for over three years.

Additionally what we used to do was a "PM blitz". In the first few days of the month we would do everything we could whilst on DP. Some stuff would then have to be left for return to port, for example a monthly medical locker check, and then every deck officer would blitz these as soon as the ship hit port, getting everything out the way as quickly as possible (but properly done of course). On the odd occasion it was not possible to do a PM in a certain month, in which case it would get logged and then would be number one on the list for return to port for water/bunkers/stores.

Any way, hope my rambling helps to answer your question and shows that it is not so bad, but also gives one of the reasons why DPOs get that little bit more in their bank at the end of the month in comparison to their deep sea colleagues (there are other reasons too).

Cheers,


Greg

[marlinspike]

That sounds like a good routine cableguy. Everyone gets their jobs done within the 12 hours and gets a nice 12 hours off where they can sleep for decent amount of time where they don't to be woken, but wake naturally and are fresh for work, plus there is even time to spare eat normally and not rush meals, watch a film or go to the gym.

I think the bigger DP vessels like DSV, Cable layer etc have a much better setup the the smaller type.

On smaller DP vessels such as PSV or AHTS you normally have a bridge team of 3 Deck officers and 1 Master. The way it is normally setup is that during DP ops the Master and one second mate will be on the 6-12 watch, and the Chief Officer and the other second mate will be on the 12-6 watch. When the vessel is not in DP ops the 3 Deck officers and the Masters should normally split their 6 hour watches so that the second mate does the 12-3, Chief Mate 3-6, Master 6-9 & the other second mate the 9-12. But there is normally a massive spanner thrown in the works when you get a master that is a complete **** and feels they are above keeping a watch outside of operations, that type of **** master generally normally come from deep sea where they are used to doing nothing, and want to continue doing nothing but watch films in their cabin rather than help out the 3 other deck officers.

With 3 deck officers and a master that won't keep a watch generally one of the other deck officers gets totally screwed over. I've seen it that the C/O and second mate continue splitting the watch working 3 on 9 off, and the second mate that is on with the master works 6 on 6 off continuously i.e getting screwed over. Sometimes I've even seen such a ridiculous thing that the second mate working the 6-12 watch was expected to go and do safety jobs outside of the 12 hour bridge watch, working 14+ hours a day, all the while the other second mate on the 12-6 watch was splitting the watch with the C/O and was responsible for charts so could finish all their jobs on the bridge watch and working 6 hours a day! As ridiculous as it is, you have one second mate doing 6 hour days, and the other 14 hour days!

I don't know why it isn't, but when a there is a bridge team on 3 deck officers and 1 master, it should be a requirement that the master keep as watch, and if they don't like it they should either go back to deep sea or get sacked. The simplest answer would be so have 4 deck officers and a master... I've heard of one PSV, AHTS operator that does this but it should be a requirement to have the setup like that.

[cableguy]

Yeah I think that sounds pretty crap to be honest, I'm quite glad I haven't had to work on any DP vessel with manning like that, but I do agree with you that if there is any Master who thinks he is above taking watches on such a lean manned ship then he should probably consider going back to deepsea.

I did spend a few trips sailing as Master on an anchored cable laying barge and I only had a C/O with me, no other deckies at all (the closest thing we had were two other anchor drivers who could be left to do the anchors etc). So what we used to do was when I carried out Master's rounds on a Saturday (fewer pesky emails to have to bother with) the C/O and I would go and do as many routines as possible, needless to say rounds used to last almost the entire day! In addition we used to spilt the remaining routines 50/50 as well, that way all routines were getting done properly, rather than the C/O running round like a blue arsed fly, missing things and not getting the chance to close them out.

However on one occasion I returned to the vessel to find all the routines in complete disarray. The single trip master who had been there before had decided routines were far below his lofty abilities and just let it all fall to rat ****. Luckily in the last few trips I did there I had a better back to back who took a similar attitude to me.