Ship Inspection Report Program (SIRE) was introduced by Oil companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF) in 1993 to ensure that the standards of ship inspection meets the expected standards of Oil Majors.
Over the years, the programme has been quite effective in improving the safety standards in the tanker industry. However, recently, the improvement has become stagnated. The industry now has an increased focus on the Human Factors which influence the performance of all individuals.
Therefore, SIRE programme, following suit with the industry, is being revised with high focus on Human Performance. It is essentially an entirely new approach and requires a new mindset.
What’s New in SIRE 2.0?
Currently, the SIRE is a checklist-based system, whereas, the SIRE 2.0 is going to rely on a risk-based questionnaire which will be tailor-made for each vessel and each operator company taking inputs for vessel, type, other vessel inspection in the operators fleet, and operators Tanker Management Self-Assessment (TMSA) submission.
This specific questionnaire will be created by an algorithm and will be available to the inspector in the form of a “Compiled Vessel Inspection Questionnaire (CVIQ)”
While onboard, upon finding any non-compliance, the inspectors will now note the observation in four main categories i.e. Hardware, Process, Human Factor and Photographs. Observations will be entered using individual response tools and will contain a Subject of Concern (SOC) as well as a Nature of Concern (NOC).
What’s the Question?
The vessel and the operators would not be able to predict the questions which would be posed in the CVIQ.
The algorithm would create the CVIQ from the highly detailed SIRE Question Library (SQL) and would be from four key areas:
- CORE: these questions are about the main risks onboard a vessel as recognized by OCIMF and would be assigned to all inspections (based on ship-type).
- ROTATIONAL: these non-core questions are selected by the algorithm at random and the system ensures that all such questions are covered over a few inspections.
- CONDITIONAL: these are questions specific to ship-type, area of operation and other vessel operation.
- CAMPAIGN: the OCIMF may from time to time focus on certain key areas and may have such questions included in the CVIQ.
It’s all Digital!
The SIRE 2.0 Question library has been completely revised. It now holds references to various regulations as well as to the TMSA. With new question format and the new CVIQ, its not possible to follow a paper-based checklist. Hence the inspections will now be completed on an intrinsically safe tablet device.
This will allow the inspectors a larger degree of freedom to enter responses in real time. Upon finding an observation, the inspectors will make use of the response tools in the tablet to write the observation. They will also be able to take pictures of the observations and include it in the finding.
Inspectors will be able to access the Pre-Inspection Questionnaire (PIQ) as well as the photograph and certificate repository for the vessel which will assist the inspector to make a more objective assessment of the vessel.
The tablet will also be equipped to record inspector’s GPS location, step count and time stamp the entries.
The Human Element
The SIRE 2.0 programme has taken a more Human centric approach. The human factors are now an integral part of the inspection process which is in stark contrast to the previous versions where hardware and management processes were the main focus.
While the previous version of SIRE did have some focus on the crew competency, the revised programme incorporates the effects of social, psychological, and physical factors on human performance and how they interface with people, processes, and equipment.
The way these effects are identified is by assessing the Performance Influencing Factors (PIF). Simply put, these are factors which indicate how likely or unlikely are the people in making mistakes. Some of these factors are poor workplace design, time pressure, workload etc.
Once the inspector identifies and observation and assigns it a Human category, he then needs to fill in the observation using the Human factor response tool and select a PIF from nine predefined PIFs.
This enables the OCIMF members as well as the operators to create trends and analysis which helps to look beyond the common cause of “Human Error” and investigate the reasons for why the people took the actions and made the decisions.
The SIRE 2.0 findings relating to human factor will also let the operators look more deeply into the data being gathered regarding the Human performance and enable a detailed assessment of the quality of the vessels and its crew.
The SIRE 2.0 is not just a revision to the existing inspection regime but an entirely new way of looking into the vessels and crew performance and take a new Risk-based approach.
Good insight for SIRE 2.0 on what to expect.