From safety code to safety in operations : A qualitative study of safety management within five companies operating in the Swedish shipping industry

Abstract: The maritime industry is vital to the Swedish trade and economy. Shipping has less environmental impact per ton transported goods than other transport modes. Furthermore, ships use the sea as their roads, thus not requiring additional impact on the environment in the form of building roads or tracks to be able to transport goods or people. The aim of this thesis is to identify the characteristics of the safety management approach and safety management systems (SMS) in five Swedish companies operating in the Swedish shipping industry. It furthermore explores whether a new approach to safety management such as Safety II and resilience engineering can offer a complementary view to the current safety management. The study design of this thesis has been a multiple case study. A literature review has been performed to gain insights into the domain and safety management in the domain in specific. Data has been gathered through semi-structured interviews with 10 respondents working within shipping or crew management companies. Five of the respondents work ashore with safety management and five of the respondents work onboard as Chief Officers or Chief Engineer. Chief Officers as well as Chief Engineers have responsibilities regarding safety for their respective department and thus have management positions within the operations. The results show that the participating companies’ safety management and SMSs are of the reactive kind. There is furthermore a gap between work as imagined, WAI, and work as done, WAD, that affects the suitability of the routines, procedures and equipment used in operations. Complexity of a system is also a contributing factor when it comes to safety management, and in the participating companies, aspects regarding complexity were identified at a regulatory, organisational and operational level. This affects the possibility to create routines and procedures that correspond to the demands, variations and situations encountered in operations. It is suggested in this thesis that a Safety II approach to safety management, along with the use of resilience engineering to develop and enhance the domain’s adaptability, can serve as a complement to the current safety management approach. Being able to adapt, respond and manage various unforeseen situations is a way of ensuring safety in operations even in complex socio-technical systems. The resilience assessment grid, RAG, is suggested as a tool to be developed to be usable in the participating companies. The RAG could serve as a tool to taper the gap between WAI and WAD, as well as to provide input to the development of indicators other than accidents for improving safety. Furthermore, it could also facilitate learning from everyday operations and what is going well – the everyday successes in everyday execution of tasks involved in operations.