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Exploring the hidden cost of Marine Failures

The expensive business of marine failures comes under the conference spotlight next month when the 3rd IMarEST Prevention of Marine Failures Conference.

Held in the City of London on 25 and 26 February, the conference will see keynote speaker, Richard Vie FIMarEST, Vice President Technical Development and Quality Assurance, Corporate Shipbuilding, Carnival Corporation & plc., President Elect IMarEST explain, that the important element is the ‘hidden costs’: “Once any regulatory requirements have been satisfied, in comparing the costs of different design solutions for ship’s systems be they structural, mechanical, electrical/electronic or human the possibility of the risk of failure is often assumed to be accounted for by the cost of insurance.

“However, the actual costs of a lack of ship availability either partially or wholly or worse any loss of life or serious injury extend beyond this. The ship owner and/or operator may well lose customer revenue and customers through loss of confidence in the service offered or the actual unavailability of the ship.

“Serious pollution incidents can damage reputation and result in expenditure beyond the direct clean-up costs,” he adds. “Such costs tend to be hidden, and not taken in to account when assessing different ship design options and how they affect not only the cost of the ship but the benefit they can bring in terms of reducing the financial consequences of failure.”

Richard Vie, speaking on the opening morning of the conference, will provide some examples of these types of hidden costs and describe an approach that can be taken to develop and record ship design principles and options to mitigate against them and to justify their incorporation in both new and existing ship designs.

Highly relevant two days
Chaired by Professor John Carlton FREng, FIMarEST, Professor of Marine Engineering, City University London, a Past President of IMarEST and organised by the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST), the conference, being held at 71 Fenchurch Street, in the heart of the City of London, has ‘Avoiding the cost of failure’ as its theme and has international delegates registered from Bahrain, Gambia, Norway, The Netherlands and UK already registered.

Following Richard Vie’s keynote address sessions on structural failure, mechanical failure, systems failures and human failure then span the two days. Topics in the structural failure session include ‘Failure prevention through good design’; ‘Understanding weak spots in hull structures’; ‘Developments in preventing fatigue on large ship structures’; ‘Recent marine failure investigations’; ‘Cryogenic material failures’ and ‘Ultimate strength of ship structures and designing for plastic collapse’.

This is followed on the first day by the mechanical failure session in which there will be presentations on ‘Minimising the dangers of microbial infestation’; ‘Micro emulsion – a technology for cutting the risk of cat-fines damage’; and ‘Cavitation erosion fracture mechanics’.

The second day opens with the systems failures session featuring presentations on ‘Risk management: Assessment of the risk of failure occurring’; ‘Approaches to systems based computer failures and integrity assurance of computer based systems for ships’; ‘Electrical systems failures’; and ‘Role of the organisational culture in failures’. And the conference ends with two presentations on human failures – ‘Failure through fatigue’ and ‘The role of simulators within the Irish Naval Service’.

Networking, as at all IMarEST events, plays an important role in the Marine Failures conference with a reception at the end of the first day as well as a sensible amount of networking time first thing on both mornings and at coffee, lunch and tea breaks throughout the two days.
Source: IMarEST