Attended vs unattended E/R. pros and cons

[Sprocket]

Here's an interesting topic, the advantages and disadvantages of of a manned vs unmanned E/R, a former chief said this was one of the 2nd EKG exam question, any comments, experiences. May the diesel force be with you..................................Sprocket

[ArkSeaJumper]

Sorry I cant stop my self

Is that the dark heavy Force or the light (clear and bright) force?

:oops:

[JK]

Too small a engineroom crew to deal with any problems is the first thing I think of.

[Sprocket]

I hear that JK, why does the bridge always get extra personnel, should be the same for E/R. Back to the question, a few years back on my off shift, our winch engine got fire and blew, good thing there was nobody close o they would have been done, and on the other hand, if an engineer had ben presnet. could he have detected or prevented this from happening.
Food for thought............................Sprocket

[JK]

I deal with a 35 year old ship with a very good A&M system that was installed about 15 years ago. Of course now the ship sails with half the ER staff. She has 5 spaces in the ER, 8 diesels and all the auxiliary machinery. What accident is waiting to happen? Not enough spare bodies to deal with issues. Anything happens all the watchkeepers are working 18 hour days.
I've been there on other ships, done the 18-20 hour days, got the "I am stupid with exhaustion" badge. Throw in bad weather and a dose of almost seasick into the mix. Going to sea may be 95% boredom, but we all know that it is the other 5% where the bad accidents come in to play.

[Dieseldame]

Great topic Sprocket, I am with JK on the accident side of things. When something goes wrong there never seems to be enough people.

I also wonder what it means to regular maintenance items, I'm lucky to be on a ship that is great about the scheduled maintenance. When the checks come around it takes all hands on to get them finished and get the equipment back online. Do you wait until you get back into port to do maintenance? Are companies going to want to have that kind of downtime?

Technology is great for monitoring some things but nothing can replace a human eye for spotting things before the monitor can. A simple example, we have issues with the coolers leaking on our engines a fair bit and it usually shows up first with drips that gradually get worse over time. By seeing he drips we have an "early warning system" on the problem and can choose to use the engine less often if want to and delay the long search and plug exercise.

Another issue whether you know if the monitoring system is working properly. We keep engine hours in a maintenance system and one day it was noticed that the hour reading on one of the pieces of equipment didn't make sense. The electrician had a look and sure enough the sensor wasn't working properly. You have to wonder what happens when the sensing components stop working.

DD

[conrod]

Having worked both for many years, I can see the ups and downs of both sides of this coin. At the end of the day I think its the quality of the engineers rather than the quantity that keep things running. If comprehensive checks are made, and a good PMS is provided for monitoring trends, then I see no problem with reduced manning. If the level of the reduction warrents UMS at night, so be it.

I think it is reasonable to assume most Chiefs, operate a 08:00 to 17:00 work day, with " rounds " made at 22:00, which depending on the ER size, should take from 1 to 2 hours. I am usually up and about by 06:00 so even with UMS, there is an Engineer about from 06:00 to 23:00 (24:00). This not only follows the regs, but gives us all a good break. Should the situation warrent it, we go on watches.............which means either 6/6 and I float - which offshore can mean a very long day for me - or 4/8 when we are not operational.

Obviously the kit to allow UMS has to be up to snuff, and checked / calibrated as per PMS, which is most sensors tested once per 12 month period. Testing gear is re-calibrated every 12 months.

At the end of the day............if the shoe fits, wear it.

[Dieseldame]

Conrad, you make some excellent points in favor of reducing engine room man power where the situation warrants it. You obviously have extensive experience with both. I wonder what your comments are regarding regular maintenance items and unexpected repairs. How do you think the reduced staffing impacts training requirements?

DD

[Sprocket]

Hello DD and Conrod, thanks for the input. I agree that monitoring systems are very important but as DD mentioned what happens when the unit malfunctions as opposed to relying on automation and computer control, I feel nothing is a better indicator of problems than our senses, i.e. looking, listening etc, routine rounds and just plain old good engineering practices. I am partial to a manned engine room, but as our industry evolves, it appears in many cases that the e/r staff is being cut back, in particular on the newer ships equipped with various computer control and automation. I can see both sides of this, and can see where this would make an interesting exam question, it is more of an opinion question but it is good to see things from both points of view. Thanks for the comments.....................................Sprocket

[conrod]

Wot comes first.............chicken or egg.

It can be argued that you need to be properly trained to get experiance, but you are only going to get experiance if are properly trained !!

Companies all want good Engineers, but the manner at which we train them at school is where I would start. I have had first trip 2 and 3/E's that are great at writing numbers in the log book, my bilges are dry and we go for months without alarms. Ironically when we did get one...........it was a Main Engine Jacket Water.............Hi Temp...........showing 250 deg C !!! and the lad called me out of bed at 03:00. Not that I was sleeping, I had infact just finished discharging 1800 cubic feet of cement to a semi-sub...........I digress. Anyway the lad is histerical. After asking him to check the thermometer..........whilst I stumbled down..........he reported on my entering the ECR, that it was 78 deg C !!

So I ask you........manned Engine Room, inside the 500 m zone of a big semi sub, and the Engineer on Watch comes across a failure in the monitoring gear, and panics because he thinks it is the engine !! IF we had been UMS, the same thing could have happened, and an engineer with the proper education, would have figured out it HAD to be the probe, inhibited the alarm, and gone back to bed.

I agree that todays monitoring gear takes a lot of the guess work away from failure trends...........but the back of the hand on a CC door, cannot be substituted by a thermometer !!

With a good 2 and 3/E, I have no problem working reduced Engine Rooms, most of my career has been spent on boats with only a C/E and 2/E, prior to UMS it was 6 on 6 off. You got a break down, you fixed it, job and knock. But the level of training of todays AVERAGE first tripper is pretty poor. My current vessel has 2 X 3/E's from a school in the UK. One is a Scots lad, the other Welsh. I asked them the other day to c/o the Air Con Compressors to clean the condr. Neither of them knew how.

You can have all the engineers in the world, in a manned ER, but if they dont know what they are doing, you may as well do it your self, which has reduced your working staff to .............. 1 !!

[JK]

It is all to do with dollars and cents, when you start working out salary dollars and staples for the extra engineers, it works into multi-millions over the life of a ship.
So if you install a alarm and monitoring system that is worth about $300,000 at the initial build and maintain it plus have reasonable redundancy in machinery, the company is in money over the life of the ship.
Most companies today would sell off a ship before it gets to the point that all of the monitoring systems are ready to crash and need replacing.

It is all about risk management.

[conrod]

Money is an issue, to a degree..............when my Company acquired our first UT 704, we had our first vessel with UMS notation. We manned them with 2 Engineers.

15 years later we have 3 sometimes 4 Engineers, and run watches. Most of our vessels now have at least 3 Engineers, and are UMS ready.

Perhaps Deepsea the cost is more obvious as your operation is very basic, but Offshore..........its very different.

[JK]

Off shift now Conrad? Time sure goes by fast.

Curious now, are the ships now 15 years old and manned by 3-4 engineers or is it new ships manned by that many?

[conrod]

Off shift................I wish. I am in Singapore on a 6 month old 70 m PSV, converting it to seismic survey. I will be here for at least 2 more months, perhaps more.

She was built as a fully manned ER, with C/E, 2/E and 3/E as the full squad. My previous vessel was 5 years old, full UMS, with the same number of bodies.

Granted we are only small, but still manage 6 diesels in the ER, all the usual stuff, plus that machinery required for supplying rigs with fuel, water, mud, brine, glycol, cement etc...............not to mention the drop down azimuth, tunnel thruster, and 2 x Z drives................I felt quite lucky with a Scotsman as 2/E, and a Nigerian first tripper as 3/E.

Perhaps I have been spoilt.................but when I first came offshore, in 1982, there was me and the C/E........with the same machinery as I have now, plus that required for an anchor handler.

Anyway, we digress. UMS or Manned. Either or, both have their good points, but they also need to be used appropriately, where you have the option.

[chuck]

I agree Conrod, there are good points and bad points to both systems depending on where they are used. A lot depends on the quality of personnel in the engine room. You can have a manned engine room and still be called out on regular basis because the engineer had an alarm on the monitoring system and did not know where to locate the actual spot in the engine room to verify the problem. I have also sailed on more updated vessels that are UMS and find yourself in the engine room about the same amount of time as if it was manned.
A lot as I said before depends on the quality of the engineers on board of the vessel for how well a manned or unmanned engine room operates.