I wonder how many of the failures discussed in this forum and others like it can be boiled down to the simple failure to follow, what some would consider hard and fast rules, listed as reccomendations in this article.

https://www.safety4sea.com/reducing-the ... e-failure/

That old saying again.
" PREVENTATIVE MAINTAINANCE "

I worked on a ship whose main MAN engine had a few failures, before my time.

The 3rd described it as, "soon as the white gets repainted, there's another crankcase explosion".

Other then generating a huge amount of work for the engineers, the engine seemed fine..until my last trip when I noticed several loose chocks on the stbd aft side. I brought it to the CE's attention PDQ (not sure now,where the 2nd was)
He sorta fluffed it off as a cargo issue, which caused much eye rolling on my part. I left soon after. The next I heard the engine had a crank failure, explosion and was out of service for 3 months.

I wonder if now that P&I Clubs are finally beginning to take enough notice to the point writing a directive outlining the basics of engineering principles will change the attitudes of ship owners and operators. I guess the P&I clubs are hoping that what is becoming more apparent, with this article, failures are increasing and there is a connection to a ships crews' ability to apply these principles with respect to machinery maintenance. With insufficent manpower to carry out the most basic of maintenance programs and an increasing reliance on technology there is a high likelyhood the trend will continue.
What I get out of it is that technology hasn't progressed to the point that a ship can operate and maintain itself without an experienced human crew. Plus if the trend is to be reversed these basic engineering principles must be maintained and reinforeced through training and sufficent available manpower on ships regardless of level of technology built into the vessel and its systems.
It is not news that Ship Owners are longing for the day when technology will elininate the "Crew Cost" line from their operating budgets but that day is a long way off. Hopefully articles like this combined with increased insurance costs will force Ship Owners to realize that a well trained and experienced crew, even on the most modern of ships, is not a liability taking away from the bottom line but an insurance policy there to protect an asset as Emergency services such as Police and Fire departments do in a City

P&I Clubs are the last hope to keep Marine Engineering alive. As breakdowns of machinery occur more and more often, repair costs and downtime will increase expotentialy. As profits fall, ship owners will be forced to face the fact that dumbing down Engineering standards is not the smart thing to do after all. Of course, by the time that happens, we'll all be long dead!

It's all about the money, and ONLY the money, all the time.

Will P&I even look at the new automated ships that are being touted as the next great step in shipping?