2024 MTS DP Conference - Personal View Part 2

Introduction:? The big DP conference has come and gone, so it’s all over but the crying.? Speaking of crying, here’s what I saw and thought last week.? That was only a partial report out and this is the second part.? It covers the second day’s presentations, panel (Sydney Dekker live-ish), and looks at the vendors.? To save space, proper names and details are available here.? I’m not MTS leadership and these are my personal views.

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Conference Day 2

Day 2 had 10 papers presented, 1 lunch presentation, and a panel discussion:

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Denny of ABS provided a good overview of hybrid power verification issues.? Battery systems (BESS) provide better response and efficiency, but must be sized to support worst case failure and environment time to termination.? State of charge should be reported to the consequence analysis.? Unique hybrid characteristics must not cause SPFs, and their different fault characteristics challenge conventional protection.? Grounding and bonding are vital (common mode & corrosion).? Common mode faults are possible through convertors.? They now expect redundant BESS for each redundancy group rather than the common BESS found in the past.? That last is a relief and we have certainly seen faults going through convertors feeding, or returning power to, DC switchboards.

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Piotr of ABB looked at closed bus model based testing.? The combination of testing & analysis allowed a wider range of testing.? It begins with static and transient state analysis, then testing to validate the model and some of the results.? The updated and validated model can then be used to prove the system without destroying it.? Proper testing is vital and requires considerable preparation, such as a detailed formal test plan.? They perform lab testing, using the same protection and control equipment and models of the system, and then perform testing on the vessel.? Experience found that open loop testing was best (inject external waveforms rather than playing with system internals).? Electromagnetic transient simulations are vital to proper testing.? I agree about open loop testing and wished for a few examples (like Toyota and Volvo entering ‘pass test’ mode, or interactions with the test system) and his opinions of testing and modeling limitations.? Obviously, using both helps.

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Dairon of OneStep Power discussed identifying the gaps between simulation and live testing.? Simulation and live testing feedback into each other.? Simulation is best at finding design issues, while live testing is best at finding unexpected build and integration issues.? Each informs the other.? It is common to find over and under excitation set up wrong (AVRs and associated protections).? Coordination conflict or gaps between systems can be major problems.? Primary injection testing is vital (CT size, direction, saturation).? There is a difference between 0V drive through analysis and testing.

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Guttorn of Kongsberg simulated the effects of high performance thrusters.? He found that faster ramp rate leads to better position keeping response, but the effect plateaus.? He compared the effect of increased thrust ramp speed or azimuth rotation speed with typical values on a 4 azimuth ship in an average environment from the field.? Higher force ramp than usual gives better beam environment capability.? Faster steering led to better beam and heading control.? He found that improvement plateaued at 3rpm, but that faster is more important when thruster bias is used.? I have found slow azimuth and ramp speed to be a limiting factor to dynamic vessel response during proving & annual trials and it’s also vital to scaling, but KM used to like slow.? I’m glad to see KM recognizing the utility of faster rates, but I worried about the difference between Luca’s 5rpm result and Guttorn’s 3rpm (more later).

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Hank of Steerprop replaced Timo of ABB and discussed the effect of faster steering on position control.? Like Guttorn, the analysis was based on real vessel environmental data, but a wider range of environments was looked at.? He found that steering speed makes a considerable difference in position control.? His wider range of environments meant that he found improvements beyond the 3rpm limit found in the proceeding analysis.? All in all, he was looking at a 30% footprint reduction with increased steering speed.? That was probably the use argument that was going to be made for the dynafin.? I have written before about slow azimuth speeds, but Marine Cybernetics proved it in older papers.

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Petra of Wartsila gave an overview of thruster design considerations, history, and some of their new products, including a new remote propulsion control system.? History included tradeoffs in design criteria, tilted azimuth thruster to reduce hull interaction, higher efficiency designs (nozzles and different optimizations, excessive optimization causes cavitation), and aiming at faster steering speed.? Their analysis found that wind service vessels had the best performance with 5rpm steering speed, while the larger wind installation vessels could make do with 3rpm.? There was more good stuff in her presentation than she had time to talk about, so it should be a good read.

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Lunch:? Jennifer Evans of IMCA is the new DP incidents guru responsible for the annual reports and the roughly quarterly DP Event bulletins that every DP vital crew member should read.? She presented an overview of the last year’s findings (2023), and compared it with the history.? IMCA is getting less DP observations, which is an unhealthy sign.? Electrical is the leading cause of DP incidents, but humans the leading cause of loss of position.? The one example given came from operating in TAM (non-redundant) in a drift-on situation outside the 500m zone and losing power.? She didn’t say it, but you really aren’t outside an area requiring redundancy if you are drift-on to a platform or vessel.? If you have been reading me long, then you know that I encourage submitting events to IMCA, so we can all learn.? Not enough people do.? Problems that can’t be seen are hard to solve.? When we know better, we can do better.? We all need reminders, so share your incidents.? I like receiving a few hints at the end of the month as well.

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Mat from Keelson presented his DP CPD data.? The numbers looked real and rational to me.? New people scored about 55% on what they needed to know and scored about 65% after training.? Given grade inflation over the decades, some might think these numbers look low, but I think they are realistic when holding people to the full standard of knowledge.? People tended to lose a little between each year and climb higher in the next year (I expect saw tooth improvement for spaced out chunks of training).? He found a big gap (about 10 points) between temporary independents and permanent crew (which makes sense).? Masters and chief engineers generally have worse DP knowledge and train worse than the DPOs and DPEs.? This has safety implications, as the people in charge understand DP less well.? This reflects what I hear in the field, and is expected when the job becomes more bureaucratic than operation.

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Rafael of Petrobras presented on DP safety management.? They found that human factors were two thirds of the problems.? For example, a vessel closed the bus tie to support a dying system from the healthy system and blacked out as a result.? The vessel had replaced people, delayed maintenance, and were encouraged to take the risk as a partial blackout was off work while if it worked they hoped to continue.? Petrobras is aiming at developing safe capability through resilience engineering (response, learning, monitoring, anticipation).? They reduced problems to zero a couple years, but each time bounced up on the following year.? On average, problems are reduced 75% but not eliminated.

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John of Nautical Institute presented on DP CPD implementation.? NI means to act as the central verification of experience and skills.? NI find 22% fail the first test (pass at 70%) and can try again without penalty.? Only 5% for those who attend the course fail the first test.? Someone from the audience asked how paper training and tests could possibly ensure practical operating skill.? Mat and John struggled to answer, because that is outside their scope.? I asked if they were teaching to different standards.? John thought that was a telling question, while Mat was more humble.? Based on the presented results, I suspect that NI is the popular teacher that gives easy grades and doesn’t require as much, while Keelson is the old school teacher who shows you where you are at, and challenges you to learn more.? Other people may come into this space.

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Yin of Shell presented on a “DP consequence analysis machine”.? This is either an advisory machine used to reduce cognitive burden and make FMEA data useful to users, or a well-meaning obfuscation to justify riskier operating modes, depending on how it is used.? It appears to assume that faults don’t affect other buses or devices (and that is sometimes true).? While flagged as human performance, it appeared to actually be used for configuration operation justification.? It considers single faults, but a tool like this might be best used to untangle the effect of the many small multiple failures that build up over time in real operations.? Do all the little things add up to something big?? Are you really safer when only the machine understands your operating configuration?

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Human Performance Panel:? Suman gathered people from different roles in the industry and asked them what they did to manage and improve human performance.? The results were not encouraging.? Admittedly, a couple of them only had a day’s notice, but this is fundamental to good management and people are fundamental to getting the job done.? One low was when someone thought that class should be assuring human performance.?

So, I’m going to rant a little.? Humans aren’t technical equipment.? With a few exceptions, too many discussions were based on the need to force or manipulate better performance.? This instrumental use of people as machines is the problem.? They aren’t robots and they won’t be replaced with robots for a long time.? Increasingly, a lazy, totalitarian, command-from-above philosophy is breaking down all the systems that make things work - the self-glorifying cult of the manager.? Things are really quite simple, intuitive, and cultural.? The fundamental foundation of human performance is respect - giving respect to others and earning respect yourself.? This doesn’t mean being nice, respect has standards.? If you look after your people, then your people will look after you.? If you break the contract, and it is increasingly broken, then everyone is in trouble.? Most people want to do a good job, but they want to do it for people they respect and trust.? You can’t make whips big enough or systems strong enough to hold resentful people who control expensive equipment.? It’s time to grow up and remember how Western culture works before we lose it for a “profit” and have to do things the hard way.? Leadership, common sense, and honor were not part of the discussion, but they should have been.? Leaders must perform, if they want their people too, and that has been a problem, as culture and personal responsibility are broken down and splintered.? Tasks are done by people.? Good leaders inspire good performance and help develop and support the ability, atmosphere, and tools to do it.? Good teams make that easy.

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Dr. Sydney Dekker:? We had an internationally renowned human performance expert listening to us blindly fumbling.? You could see surprise and concern on his face as he listened, until they removed him from the screen.? Afterwards, he was asked for his thoughts, “In a sense, I applaud your efforts, but…”

• Learn from success – not near misses but good catches
• Success and failure can be close together – over optimization can be dangerous
• Celebrate but be suspicious of failure – capture, understand, and learn

That isn’t a great summary, as we had a very active note debate at my table and my best stuff was on other people’s pads.? There were some “offshore” viewpoints.

There were some interesting questions:

• What are key steps to reform?? Get the people in charge to change how they see things.
• Dangers of goals of zero?? The perfect is the enemy of the good.? Aim at and show improved results.? Some of you know that I got in trouble for opposing “incident free DP operations” as dangerous.? It’s always better when the expert says it.? Petrobras was thoughtful about their own goals.
• Role of automation?? Automation is useful but can cause problems as well as solve them.
• The importance of integrity.? More of a statement than question but Dr Dekker was pleased that someone got it.? Tools and principles, not slogans.

We have a lot to learn, but finding that was probably part of the goal of the session.

Someone asked about access to the video.? It’s on Whova if you attended the conference.? Otherwise, consider his site and there is a ton on YouTube. Some of his articles are on his website and Sean has posted one here.

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Vendors:

Last year, I had to admit that I didn’t go around most of the vendors.? I tried to do better this year and ask each “What was new?” but still fell short.? In numerical table order:

1. ABL Group – I was biased towards equipment and didn’t get to them.
2. GE Vernova – GE broke up into four new companies, so that has been their focus this year.? They still offer complete systems.? New stuff is pending.
3. ABB Ports & Maritime – The dynafin is new.? It’s like a Voith Schneider but with individual fin control.? Piotr had a paper on model based testing.
4. Global Maritime – They are aiming to grow again.
5. ANCS (Wartsila) – ANCS is going to split off from Wartsila.? The newer RangeGuard won’t just be a radar based marine proximity sensor but a beaconless relative position sensor (Jan/25).? The SceneScan has been updated to the latest technology (optical gain from 30 to 1 million, scan from 2.5kHz to 30, pulse filtering to ignore noise and the sun, range from 200m to >600m), but I can’t remember the release date.? They were quite proud of their VisionAssist product.? It could be useful, but I do DP.?
6. Veripos/Hexagon – Still sell spoof detecting and anti-jamming antennas.? Last year found they weren’t proof against some national actors or high power jamming (also affected radars, RADius, RadaScan).? The military still loves them.? Asked about IMCA guidance note 1661 on correction redundancy mapping and told separate geostationary satellites and base stations.
7. Kongsberg – Follow Target software improvement still being worked on.? They had papers on cable pull-in and high performance thrusters.
8. Kongberg - Asked about IMCA guidance note 1661 on correction redundancy mapping and told separate geostationary satellites and base stations.
9. Oceaneering – Actually C-Nav.? Asked about IMCA guidance note 1661 on correction redundancy mapping and they actually had a good answer.? They don’t use the same geostationary satellites as everyone else.? They have correction independence by using different base stations (most vendors claimed this part) and using Iridium, low earth orbit, many moving satellites.? Thus they have correction independence from other DGPS vendors.? A C-Nav is more independent as a second DGPS.
10. OneStep Power – They are partnering with ioCurrents (data collection and analysis) to find leading indications of potential problems.? They are concerned by “too many blackout investigations.”
11. OneStep Power – They had papers on management of change and validation testing.
12. Keelson – Continues as the only independent accredited provider of DP CPD. ?They also do marine assurance, and had a paper.
13. Sonardyne –SPRINT-Nav is being used by a couple of DP vessels and Sonardyne is looking for more DP test partners.? You would think a beaconless, shallow water, bottom locking sensor would sell itself, but almost no one seems to know about it. ?Governmental secret squirrels are still using it heavily.
14. Fugro – They presented a paper Tuesday and I asked the presenter about recent events where two geostationary satellite corrections weren’t independent.? Speaking with Fugro, Wednesday, they said that the satellite maintenance was usually known 3 months in advance and a safety alert issued.? This wasn’t a master place on a website for easy lookup, but a chain of messages any of which could go wrong – main office to local office, local office to VTOs, VTOs to ship, ship to DPOs, DPOs to MOC.
15. Fugro – I think it was Fugro who talked about Internet correction backup as that usually uses separate satellites.
16. Siemens – I tried to catch them but the desk was empty when I had time.
17. AKA – Has a bumpless swing thruster design that uses a small battery to make it actually bumpless.? They also did an alternative fuel system on a ferry.? No AKA papers this year but Ed relieved Dr Dekker by asking a question that made him happy.
18. Imenco – Who are they?? I didn’t know either.? They own Nautronix.? I asked the old hand who worked with them.? It sounds like the new management is moving in positive directions with experienced workers.? Some of their other products include AI enhanced camera systems used to count lice in fish farms.? It sounds unrelated until you start thinking of the old oil windows you used to see on pumps and purifier discharges and using the same technology there.
19. Thrustmaster – Still makes add on standalone or permanent thrusters and the Icon DP system.
20. Voith – Still makes thrusters and thruster control systems.
21. Beier – Now Beier Integrated Systems.? They still provide DP, power management, engine room automation, navigation and communication systems.
22. Hoppe –Hoppe makes roll reduction tank systems, remote valve control, measuring equipment, and monitoring systems.?

I’m pretty sure that WAAS uses different geostationary satellites.

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Conclusion:? So, that’s an overview of what I saw Wednesday.? I hope it is useful to those who couldn’t make it to the MTS DP Conference this year.