In recent years, the marine industry is onto an innovative change with changing crew sizes and skills to adapt new technologies. The most recent proposals is in areas of digitized energy management, onshore control centres and even unmanned ships, suggest upcoming radical changes to marine labour forces. If current predictions come true, it is likely to change the industry from its traditional vestiges.
Changing Workforce
Technological advancements mean that unmanned vessels and smart shipping are no longer a mere notion but a real possibility. In that context, Clyde & Co teamed up with IMarEST to understand how more than 20,000 marine professionals around the world are responding to these emerging technologies. Across the four categories of unmanned ships, smart shipping, energy management and green technology the strong majority of survey recipients all shared a common message: when considering the adoption of new technologies, management needs to keep crew at the forefront of their minds.
Opportunity and risk for the industry
The new technology debates are keen to point out the benefits of smart and autonomous shipping, in terms of cost and safety. The benefits are recognised by surveyors of autonomous vessels are,
- Reduced health and safety risks;
- Reduced risk of human error; and
- Cost saving in personnel.
On the other hand, there is uncertainty among those who doubt whether all the claims made by technology companies can be achieved within a foreseeable timeframe, the union lobby in particular, is raising questions about the safety risks inherent in automation, and whether the crew cost reduction figures are realistic.
Privacy concerns
There is also a chance of piracy elimination by autonomous ships as there will be no human hostages to demand ransom payments. With new technology, new risks arise – the prospect of digital piracy by hackers with the potential to take over ship controls.
Concerns on crew’s health
Interesting questions are raised around the impact of dwindling crew numbers on those who remain, with smaller crews isolated on vessels for months at a time. It becomes more difficult to attract seafarers to these conditions and the industry is unsure of how to support any mental health issues which might arise.
While the development of autonomous ships is still in its infancy, 65% of those surveyed showed that autonomous ships will arrive within the next 15 years in varying forms of sophistication, and certainly the developments in smart shipping are already changing the way crew operate at an incredible rate. Whether change will be immediate or, more likely, in stages it seems certain that technology will continue to drive changes to the role of crew into the next generation.
The need to plug the knowledge gap
Digital technologies continue to be developed to determine and optimise the operational efficiency of a vessel, and in the short term this is to the benefit of crew, with one respondent commenting: “If correctly utilized, data-centric operation will enhance the functions of existing crews.”
The biggest benefit of smart shipping is to allow these developments to work alongside crew to increase operational efficiency. However, as with any new idea the use of these technologies will, if they are to be used efficiently, require a change of mind-set throughout the organisation.
Crew readiness
While the benefits of new technologies are clear, ship-owners will need to assess whether their crews are ready to use the tools available. 31% of those surveyed felt that crew competencies and skill sets were not at all prepared for smart shipping and only 15% felt that crews were prepared. As a result, ship-owners face a knowledge gap between the technology available and the ability of crews to use those technologies.
While the experience of seafarers is undeniable, the use of technology alongside that experience will be important to ensure vessels are running at optimum levels. Ship-owners will therefore need to think about the training needs of their crews in order to benefit from smart shipping developments.
Training and development of staffs are also crucial for effective crew performance.
Changing job roles in smart and autonomous ships
The feeling amongst those surveyed is that smart shipping will not act to reduce crew sizes. Instead there is likely to be a shift in control from the experienced seafarer to the onshore software engineer. This fundamental shift raises difficult questions about how to protect the existing workforce, how to fill future roles and how to manage the difficult safety issues which arise from this new dynamic.
Many believe that no technology can replace the instinctive knowledge of an experienced master, yet experience from research and advancements in other sectors is generating evidence that computerised data based decision-making is more effective than human decision-making.
The risk, of course, lies in the technology creating a new source of error – technological rather than human – and confidence in smart technologies will depend heavily on minimising such errors to the satisfaction of stakeholders including maritime regulators.
However, the reality is likely to be that the skill set for new technology roles will be very different to that of the average crew member. Surveys suggests that current crews lack the experience or skills to support or act as shore-based operators.
Opportunities for women
A positive note is that the increase in shore side roles could be attractive to a whole new type of individual, in particular, quality shore based roles are likely to be more attractive to women, a group currently much under-represented in the industry.
Skill hunt and onshore operations
Ship-owners will need to consider where to base their onshore operations and a big part of that decision will have to include where they will find those with the appropriate skills. The places where the sector can source technology expertise may be very different to current crew sourcing jurisdictions. As a result, while there may be cost saving from reductions in the numbers of personnel needed, there is no way around the need to have highly qualified workers, and the cost of those workers may well be higher than the traditional crew salary.
The future of technology
In conclusion, the technologies available today come with huge benefits to all industries and the shipping industry is no exception. It is not wise to ignore these changes that might draw back the maritime industry.
While the shipping industry is still very much uncertain about the changes that will result from these technologies, especially in regard to regulatory and legal changes, it is clear that workforce needs skill revival.
Enhancing the workforce will be a challenge and an opportunity for ship-owners, but is also a means to foresee the future, which drives shipping industry at par with technological changes of the near future.
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Source: Lexology
