IMCA DP Annual Incident Report 2023

Introduction: I love these things. They are nothing like the statistically significant onshore industry databases, but they help ground us in reality. I’ve used them extensively in training myself and others. Before we begin looking at the IMCA 2023 DP Incident Review, let us take a moment to consider a fallen friend, who have been with us for over 40 years.

In Memorial: Some feared and others hoped for the event. I have put off looking at it for months. I didn’t want to believe it was true, but I spoke to the lead doctor and he confirmed everything. Brethren and Sistren, we are gathered here today to bear witness to, and to honor, a fallen hero, the IMCA Annual DP Incident “Summary”. Some of you knew him when he was young, performed his good work for the DP Vessel Owner Association from 1980 to 1995, and was called DPSI – short for DP Station keeping Incident. The name lives on today, but DPSI is sadly no longer with us.

In the earliest years, he provided just the details of each individual incident. Later, high level analysis of the fragmentary data was added, as if the data was representative and unskewed. Those of us, who knew DPSI, knew that wasn’t the case, as a small group of very professional vessels provided selective data. But, over the years, the high level analysis was given more and more importance, and fashions in reporting and random noise were reviewed as if they were trends in events. DPSI didn’t care and plowed along - giving us vital details that the high level review brushed over. In 2014, IMCA moved the old warhorse aside, took away his event trees, and shunted his event details into a separate supplementary table called “Summary.” The event details became the “summary”, while the high level “review” of variable limited reporting became the true report. Some of us feared for the ongoing health of “Summary” and his vital insights.

This year the Review arrived, but "Summary" was gone. When I queried if a mistake was made, perhaps his work had been mislaid, I was told that a decision had been made to humanely put him down. Some of us will miss old “Summary” and the lessons he had for us.

He is survived by young DPE, who has recovered nicely from his 2022 death scare, and carries on part of Summary’s proud tradition. He carries on the event trees and event details of his father. And if it is for far less events, it is often in greater detail, better analyzed, freely distributed, and, until this year, part of the annual Review. His father would have been proud. Nevertheless, let us have a moment of silence for our fallen friend and his simple facts. We shall not see his like again.

Alright, folks, you can put your hats back on.

What Can We Learn? I normally dig into the details of each event, as I sometimes disagree with IMCA’s classification, especially if I have inside information, and want to learn. But this year, I have to follow the IMCA classifications. In incidents that led to loss of position, open and closed bus tie vessels were tied 3:3 for electrical faults as the main cause (ship effect). This is hardly surprising, because neither one is usually done right, as vendors, shipyards, consultants, class societies, and owners are generally lax about electrical power redundancy. Electrical and propulsion remain leading main causes for loss of position. Propulsion control is another set of functions poorly covered by specification or analysis, with some rule required functions generally missing and real DP capability often undefined. Given that information, it’s no surprise that computer faults were the next leading main cause. As usual, there were a lot of non-redundant position reference configurations scattered among all three types of incidents. Known redundancy requirements and actual practice remain in disagreement.

Human Factors: The report identified human factors as the major initiating cause that made loss of position possible by not maintaining protective barriers. Human faults were almost twice as common as environmental faults and were three times are common as electrical or computer faults. This seems right to me and closer to my conclusions from last week’s article (). People not knowing how things work or how to work them ended up as the leading trigger of loss of position. Old fashioned, on-the-boat training still looks good to me.

Golden Rules: In January, I planned to compare the 2023 DP Incident Summary details against Petrobras’s DP Golden Rules and check for applicability, but the lack of the summary spreadsheet made that impossible. The only incidents for which we have details are already covered in the DPEs, but the focus on human factors gave a brief listing of related failures, so they can be compared with the Golden Rules. The table below compares the 18 loss of position incidents initiated by human factors with the Golden Rules. The 18 incidents appear to reflect all 6 Golden Rules. They contain all the classic errors from bad setup, to bad operation, to not knowing how the IJS works when the DP system fails.

Conclusion: I’m not sure that I added much with this article. I’ll miss the detailed information that the reports used to provide, but I enjoyed and agreed with their concentration on human factors. There seemed to be a good correspondence between the Petrobras DP Golden Rules and the only described incidents, but that was to be expected, as they were all human factor incidents. I think it is very important that everyone understands that the crew is vital to avoiding and correcting DP problems.

P.S. Current & Future Problems: Unfortunately, crews are no longer treated like the skilled vessel specialists that we need to support redundant DP operation. Many modern DPOs & DPEs are commodities bought, sold, and bounced around from vessel to vessel without getting the chance to develop the in-depth vessel-specific knowledge expected by good DP operation. It’s a poor way to run things and it shows. Paperwork qualifications and classroom-based CPD will not make up for structural faults in the market. Worse, the crews are expected to deal with all the mistakes made during sloppy design, analysis, construction, testing, and approval. We can do better than this, and there are segments of the DP market that do so. We need the rest of the market to go that way before there is a big disaster and the flag states step in. That’s how this market works – if you fail to self-regulate, everyone will be punished when there is a big public accident. We all need to do our part to keep people safe, and make sure an overreaction isn’t needed.