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SIMS, LONAVALA
Ship-In-Campus Is Ready For Countdown

The world’s first hilltop ship-in-campus is undergoing the final touch up before being launched as only one of its kind in the world’s maritime training field. The ship designed and built under the supervision of the Indian Class, is fitted with all the latest equipments including a Mitsui B&W test main engine bought from the manufacturers in Japan.

The stern of the ship, purpose built purely for maritime training can boast of all brand new equipment bought from the manufacturers in Japan and elsewhere. The ship although stationary mimics a real life sailing ship by all means and thereby provides a training experience hitherto unavailable elsewhere.

Completed in almost a record time of six months, the ship is built entirely by the in-house talent, knowledge and experience of the ESM superintendents together with the faculty of SIMS. Indeed, an extra-ordinary facility for the cadets to be initiated to the shipping life!


*Note: This monthly safety moment is collected from various sources for educational purpose and is not an actual incident from the ESM fleet.
          Incident is taken from DNV Casualty Information but lessons learnt have been modified.
Flooding Of Engine Room During Maintenance

Course of events
A major ingress of water happened in the engine room when the vessel was on a transit voyage. Within a short time, the lower engine room was flooded and electric motors short-circuited. External assistance was eventually obtained and the ship was towed safely to port.

Extent of damage
The engine room was flooded to the top of the main engine. Although immersed for a short time only, all motors, generators, starters, cables and other electric equipment had to be overhauled and renewed in parts or total.

Probable cause
Routine maintenance of the engine room main sea strainer had been carried out prior to the casualty. The most probable cause of the casualty was found to be inadequate control of and co-ordination of ongoing maintenance work on board.

During the work the crewmember working on the strainer had been called away for another job, leaving the strainer open. Apparently unaware of the maintenance work going on, one of the ship’s engineers had opened the sea valve next to the strainer from the control room, resulting in ingress of water through the open strainer. The high level bilge alarm was automatically activated but had been acknowledged by one of the engineers without further action.

As the crew became aware of the situation, the sea valve could neither be closed remotely nor manually due to the high water level.

Lessons to be learned
This is one of several incidents over the years where opening up of sea water systems during maintenance has caused flooding of the engine room as a result of operational mistakes, seriously jeopardising the safety of the involved vessels.

The casualty again underlines the importance of:
•

Isolation permit system for safeguarding of maintenance work on board to be followed strictly.
•

The senior officers must ensure that procedures like toolbox meetings, Take 5 are properly understood and implemented.

•

A responsible engineer must monitor such critical jobs which give the sea direct access, like the main sea water system and must not be left to a rating alone.
•

Every alarm received is to be followed up till the error is rectified.

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