Watchkeeping, Engineering Practice and Resource Management
Watchkeeping, Engineering Practice and Resource Management
The exam checks the routines of the engineering watch and the non-technical skills that prevent accidents.
Taking over and keeping watch
- Take over only when satisfied: parameters normal, outstanding defects known, work in progress and isolations listed, bridge informed.
- Round the machinery spaces at intervals; log pressures, temperatures, levels and fuel consumption; read trends, not only alarm limits.
- UMS: confirm alarm and dead-man systems are working, the bridge is manned and the duty engineer is within call.
- Handover is face to face, with anything abnormal stated explicitly. Never hand over an unresolved alarm.
Communications and resource management
- Closed loop: order given, received, repeated back, confirmed, then reported when done.
- Challenge and response: anyone may question an unsafe instruction; the authority gradient must let a junior say stop.
- Situational awareness, workload, fatigue, a short-term strategy for the next watch, toolbox talks before jobs, debriefs after drills.
Worked example
At 03:40 under UMS the high bilge level alarm sounds in the engine room.
- Acknowledge on the panel and inform the bridge at once, because propulsion may be at risk.
- Call the duty engineer and, if the level is rising, the second engineer.
- Use CCTV and tank soundings to find the source before entering; take a torch and radio, and never enter alone where flooding or electrical damage is possible.
- Line up the standby bilge pump and check whether the automatic pump tripped; find the cause before restarting.
- Record times, actions and readings, and report to the chief engineer.
Traps
Silencing an alarm and going back to the cabin; entering a space alone to look for water; restarting a tripped pump without finding the cause; vague orders with no repeat-back; leaving the engine room unattended with no one on the bridge.