Textbook of Maritime Medicine

11.7.1 Describing Crew Resource Management

Crew Resource Management (CRM) is described and defined as the use of all available human, informational and material sources for the effective conduct of a safe and efficient operation, e.g. a ships voyage. This means, that CRM is an active and interactive process including all crew members, which helps to detect, communi­cate and avoid or handle signi­ficant threats to an operation, action or task by deve­lo­ping and applying effi­cient counter­mea­sures to minimize the safety risk. The corre­spon­ding skills and abilities can be regarded as being a primary line of defence against safety risks and threats immanent within the system as well as human errors and their con­sequences: „…the overall task of successfully com­ple­ting a … mission (authors remark: today) is always a team task ... crews always operate in an organi­zational context, and the transactions between the crew and the repre­sen­tatives of that context (e.g. organiza­tio­nal managers or … traffic controllers) are consequential for any crews perfor­mance”. Hackman (1986) describes the crew as being frontline opera­tors – following Dekkers definition: on the sharp end – and safety to be a line function by which the entire com­pany culture and company structure is defined.

Under the roof of Human Factors Resources Management three basic aspects gene­rally have to be specified: the basic competences of crews necessary for an optimum performance – technical, pro­ce­dural and inter­personal skills going hand in hand – which might be called “Good Seamanship”, the Multi Crew Con­cept (MCC), which, being a prerequisite to CRM, is tightly related to the manage­ment of crew resources and the CRM itself. MCC deter­mines the orga­ni­sa­tion and deployment of work on the entire ship or within sub­di­vi­sions like e.g. on the bridge. It describes

• how the crew members should interact,
• how they should coordinate their respective tasks and decisions, and how this co­ordination fits into the system,
• the continuous and systematic cooperation of crew members,
• a precise and balanced deployment of tasks to ensure, that no crew member is overloaded while another crew member might be underloaded,
• mutual exchange of information and mutual support, aided by a predefined termi­nology – the wording – and a specific language use, e.g. the Standard Marine Com­munication Phrases (SMCP), defined and published by the International Ma­ri­time Organisation (IMO),
• as well as mutual surveillance and cross checking in normal and abnormal situa­tions.

The basic principles that define CRM are nowadays being classified into ten specified cate­gories:

• risk awareness and error management strategies,
• decision making skills and the competence to judge and priorize,
• situation awareness and active workload control, together with fatigue aware­ness and ability to manage fatigue, e.g. as specified in the IMOs Guidelines on Fatigue, and stress,
• briefings as an exchange of shared or common mental models as well as a self reflection of forthcoming events, tasks and actions,
• a timely and precise communication (in this case being a closed loop commu­ni­cation) and a standardised and common phraseo­logy/wording, here again e.g. IMOs SMCP,
• the ability to monitor and cross-check,
• social competence, leadership competence and the ability to delegate, togeth­er with appropriate good followership, which has to include asser­tive­ness,
• the knowledge of and willingness to use and constructively and continuously question Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs),
• the use of all available information and aids,
• and finally the development of an appropriate individual work method within the systems given frames.

The discussion, whether tools like stress management, fatigue - and sleep mana­ge­ment (see above) or others have to be included into CRM principles remains open.

11.7.2. Historical Evolution of Crew Resource Management

To understand the process of the development of Bridge Team Management, Bridge Resource Management or Crew Resource Management in the maritime industry it is necessary to take a look at the development of CRM in aviation.

The development of CRM is commonly divided up into five generations. In the be­gin­ning 1970s Pan Am World Airways recognized that using syner­gi­stic effects within the Crew of an airliner would improve the overall performance of that crew dramati­cal­ly. First efforts where un­der­taken to inte­grate a form of crew coordination into pilots trainings. But the com­mence­ment of re­gu­lar CRM training has to be dated back to 1979, following a work­shop held by NASA and some members of the airline indu­stry. Based on the ana­lysis of air traffic accidents and focussing on the relevance of human factors, the scope of these early CRM trainings, at that time labelled Cockpit Resource Manage­ment and thus excluding the rest of the crew, was the delivery of cognitive knowledge and skills as well as the aim to influ­ence per­sonal attitudes of participating crew members in the direction of what – at that time – was under­stood to be appropriate cockpit management.

In the beginning 1980s United Airlines introduced the first CRM training class that integrated Line Oriented Flight Training (LOFT). This trai­ning taught the participants how to judge their own and their team members´ behaviour.  Another crucial aspect of this trainings was the concept of annual recurrent training classes, which – being CRM/LOFT trai­ning mis­si­o­ns – would focus on group dynamic processes.

Based on the analysis of a multitude of incidents and accidents, in the late 1980s it was understood that the spatial, social and cultural segregation (here: culture of work and job socialisation) within the workplace “aircraft” needed to be reduced. From now on the cabin crew was regarded as being another valuable resource for infor­ma­tion and help. This in turn led to the understanding that the process could not just end up with de­signing new rules or regu­la­tions, but that one was discussing a thorough reno­va­tion of an overcome so­cio-cul­tu­ral system, which even reached deeply into the pri­vate life of the crews. From that point on Cockpit Resource Management turned into Crew Resource Mana­ge­ment. At that time the first Joint CRM trainings for cock­pit crews together with cabin crews were discussed. Today it is good practice to split the initial CRM trainings up into CRM for cockpit crews and CRM for cabin crews and rejoin both workplaces in the recurrent training phases.

In the 1990s CRM training was supplemented by a systematic approach to incorpo­rate crite­ria like company culture and organisational factors. The base was the eva­luation of CRM within the operational line service. Additionally the barriers between skills trai­ning, rating and CRM were torn down to implement a training philosophy that em­bedded all essential components into every aspect of pilot training. The additional scope on the complex entity of an airlines operation led to the development of CRM trai­nings for all parties involved in the operation. The most widespread of those trai­nings still are Maintenance CRM and Cockpit-Air Traffic Control Joint CRM. Main topic was no longer the coordination within the aircraft alone, but the coordination of all relevant aspects influential to the flight operation. This in turn has consequently led to re-labelling the Crew Resource Ma­na­ge­ment to now being called Compa­ny Re­­source Management.

With the implementation of the Joint Aviation Requirements, CRM nowadays is a man­­datory teaching and training item for all European airlines and pilot schools. With­­in the last three decades the concept of CRM was developed to meanwhile be­ing practically applicable in civilian and military aviation. CRM is a central tool for inci­dent/accident avoidance and its proactive na­ture breeds many advantages. It ena­bles operators to achieve a level of safety and efficiency that was un­known be­fore and thus should be incorporated into all complex, risky and dynamic work fields.

Today CRM is understood as being an integral part of the concept of Threat and Er­ror Management (TEM). TEM has first been described in the Mid 1990s and the con­cept sug­gests how to analyze threats to an operation, point out the possible er­rors that derive from these threats and how to manage those errors to avoid un­de­sired states of the operated system. TEM cannot be discussed as being relevant for the Human Factors aspects only but bears relevance for all competence sectors within one industry: shipbuilding, management of ships, cargo handling, navigation etc.

Future challenges for CRM and TEM can be found in the increasing globalisation. It has long been common practice that crew­mem­bers of many different nationalities, cul­tures and classes have to work together. This makes inter­cultural training as well as inter-social training programmes for crews a neces­sity.

Additionally the influence of the automation and automated supporting systems is con­­stantly increasing. Today operators have to deal with systems that differ signi­fi­cantly from every system that they had been trained on during their school phase, es­pe­cially in theoretical design features and application philosophy. This naturally influ­ences CRM and fundamental aspects of the MCC. On top of that the acceptance of automation and automated supporting systems differs culturally.

Finally it has to be understood, that since the primary causes of the majority of inci­dents and accidents can be found in human factors and human performance limita­tions, CRM plays a vital role in reducing their negative outcome. CRM trai­ning has to become mandatory for opera­tors in every complex, risky and dynamic work field and will be mandatory for ships crews with the upcoming revision of the STCW in June 2010. To imple­ment this demand without creating a major uproar – like it had in aviation – will be another future chal­lenge in the maritime industry. This challenge has to date been accepted by only a few compa­nies e.g. the German company Nie­der­elbe Schiffahrt­gesell­schaft Buxtehude (NSB), which thus are claiming to be taking the pole positions for 2010.

11.7.3 Resources Management in the Maritime Industry

Resource management strategies have been described for the maritime industry and for military naval use. A multitude of institutions or training centres offer different ap­pro­aches to Bridge Team Management (BTM) or Bridge Resource Management (BRM) trainings. There are many publications available as well, in the form of elec­tro­nic scripts or in the shape of books. But so far no stringent concept to manage the en­tire crew resources has evolved on the market. Even the majority of existing con­cepts hover around the discussion of ship handling and navigational skills; human fac­­tors are widely neglected.

Many ship owners deny and reject the necessity of CRM trainings because there are very little official rules or regulations; apart from only few authorities – mainly in north America – the majority of authorities make little or no statements concerning CRM trai­ning or use. Even the IMO does not offer very much within SOLAS, ISPS Code or even the STCW, although it must be said, that the 2010 amendment to the STCW will regulate CRM training as mandatory for seafarers.

Many presently available BRM systems derive from military naval applications and cor­respond with the aviation industry´s Cockpit Re­sour­ce Manage­ment of the first generation. It was tried to transfer these approa­ches into the civilian maritime indu­stry, where they have gai­ned popularity as Bridge Team Ma­na­­g­ement. But this could have – foreseeable – been only partially success­ful, be­cause military and civilian sea­faring differs substan­tially and both are operationally not easily comparable to avi­ation. Where in military ma­rine systems – regularly facing situations that threaten life or personal integrity and sanity – neces­sarily rigid and steep hierarchies are based on commonly identical cultural back­grounds with common languages spoken within one operative unit and much lesser econo­mi­cal pressure, civilian marine systems ope­rate under substantial economic pressure with a multitude of different cultures and languages working together under much flat­ter hierarchies and only little threat for the personal integrity.

Consequently the few aspects that have so far been stringently transferred into civi­li­an marine operation cover navigational topics like passage planning, conduct of voy­a­ges, navi­gational watch-keeping, integration of automated systems or inci­dent/ac­ci­dent in­vestigation. But every nautical officer should be in command of these topics any­way. Essential human factors related aspects like team work strategies, team mana­gement, communication, conflict management, threat- and error manage­ment or decision making are in most cases discussed only marginally and consequently are not wor­ked out in full detail.

Designing CRM training and CRM application for the maritime industry would mean the overall and complete integration of every work field onboard a ship into a com­plex team structure. This would mean nautical and technical officers of different cultures working open and closely together, as well as with the bosun, ratings (AB and other), cooks and stewards. Designing CRM training for shipping companies, we found out, that this is – at the moment – almost impossible to realize. But this im­pos­si­bility to imple­ment a true CRM system in current civilian maritime systems came to us as no sur­prise. At first we had to understand that the underlying schemes are very old, tried and tested and have been working to produce pretty decent and acceptable results for centuries. Secondly, even in fields that traditionally gladly adopt inno­va­tions, like in aviation, the imple­men­tation of CRM strategies and ideas has so far taken more than three de­cades and still did not yet come to a fully satisfying result.

As already mentioned, in aviation it is good practice to split the initial CRM trainings up into CRM Cockpit and CRM Cabin and rejoin both crews in the recurrent training phases. In aviation further CRM training has to be given when the aircraft type is chan­ged, when the operator is changed or in case of promotion to com­mand status. We found it to be suitable for the maritime industry to divide training up in a similar man­ner. It seems to be senseful, to train the ships head officers – cap­tain, chief mate and chief engineer – first. This top-down approach seems to produce a better com­pliance, especially with the captains, who will be trained in exclu­sive se­minars first. A parallel given bottom-up training at nautical schools and universities will gua­ran­tee apprentices or young officers understanding the meaning of CRM. The goal has to be the deploy­ment of the ideas behind CRM within the officers ranks bottom-up – youn­ger officers will then never have learned to work without applying CRM practices – and top-down, developing the necessary knowledge and compliance by the leading individuals.

Another vital realisation in regard to CRM training is, that it is – logically – not possi­ble to simply transfer CRM from aviation or medicine into the maritime business, be­cause here aspects, which are of little or no importance in aviation have turned out to be major distresses. It is no news, that – except from long duration space mis­sions – a ship is the only work place that cannot be left by the individual for months and for­ces its workers to share almost every aspect of privacy including their free time. Seafarers are, for many months of duty, avai­lable at the work place for 24 hours on seven days a week with very limited privacy! Additionally a ship constantly moves, rocks and rolls and forces opera­tors into watch schemes, which do not allow them – except ships engi­neers at sea – to hold sleeps for more than six hours regularly for very long periods of time. Based on traditional CRM topics it consequently was necessary to stress topics in detail like:

• intercultural communication and behaviour,
• conflict mana­ge­ment,
• fatigue and re­laxation/sleep management,
• stress management,
• TEM in re­gard to incident/accident analysis and
• maritime decision-ma­king.

But why should companies adopt CRM systems? There are many reasons to be found to justify the implementation of CRM training and the practice of CRM systems. The gains in safety and in motivation of crews will re­flect positively in cost-benefit cal­culations. A problem in this respect remains, that on one hand intrinsic motivators, on the other hand the safety latency a company produces and its ability to prevent acci­dents can hardly be calculated (or pressed) into a cost-benefit-equation.

Conse­quent­ly, justifying CRM training would ra­ther be a discussion founded on business calculation, which then would point out mone­ta­ry gains and – more impor­tan­tly – the safety margin gained for the international maritime industry.

This in turn could well propel the public image of a certain shipping company by initia­ting the public discussion of the social, environmental and economical respon­si­bi­li­ties the company has understood and turned into practice.

Another forthcoming advantage that can be monitored in other industries should be re­duc­­tions in specific insurance costs for which a company that presents a stringent TEM prac­tice could opt for.

The implementation and practice of CRM and of TEM is complex and expensive, but in the end practicing CRM is more than rewarding, as long as it always follows the two maxims “Achieve highest degree of safety!” and “Safest course of action!”