Due Diligence in Marine Pilotage

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the application of due diligence in the Marine Pilotage industry. 

They discuss various consulting work they’ve done with Marine Pilots across Australia and New Zealand ports, and summarise the key take-away that the process is no different for pilotage due diligence reviews than any other (industry’s) due diligence review. 

That is, 

• There needs to be an argument as to why all the credible critical issues have been identified. 
• In a port, they typically look at all the user groups and what activities they're doing. 
• Look at all the controls that can be put in place, which are reasonable in the circumstances. 
• Always needs to be a quality assurance system to make sure that what is being put in place are sustained and managed accordingly. 

But, noting, there will be site specific or port specific issues so the controls put in place may be different.

Find out more about Richard and Gaye’s consulting work at https://www.r2a.com.au.  

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the application of due diligence within the marine pilotage industry.

(00:16):

We hope you enjoy the chat. If you do, please give us a rating and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you'd like any more information on R2A's work or have any feedback or topic ideas, head to www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:37):

Good morning, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:39):

We thought we'd focus on marine pilotage today because during this season, we were going to cover some of the industries that we do some work in. So you're actually giving a presentation next week (October 2024) in New Zealand in Christchurch to the New Zealand Marine Pilots' Association.

Richard Robinson (00:55):

Indeed.

Gaye Francis (00:55):

And we've done this on a number of occasions and for a number of courses both in Australia and New Zealand. So I guess, do you want to sort of have a quick run through your presentation... What you're going to cover in your presentation.

Richard Robinson (01:11):

Well, it hasn't been totally confirmed yet, but I'm following Antonio De Lito, who's an Australian Italian, and I suspect he's going to be talking about the incident of the Joly Nero that took out the control tower in Genoa and certain people got killed. Now that was about six/seven years ago now, I think it is. And as a consequence of all these deaths, and it was a litany of disasters and confusion and things that went wrong between the marine pilot and the ship's engineers and the captain, in part because certain bits of equipment weren't working, i.e. the engine rev counter wasn't working, so the pilot didn't realise quickly enough, they were relying on voice messages between the engine room and the captain as to where the actual state of the engines were. But anyway, the control tower got took out. And strangely enough, the Italian courts adopted this notion of due diligence, which I didn't think was a civil lawy, European-type Roman law, not polyonic law concept, which I thought was a peculiarly common law, English speaking world idea. But they applied it and as a consequence they put the captain away, the chief engineer away, they tried to put the marine pilot away, but he got off on appeal and now they're having a crack at the engineer who put the control tower on the point such that if a ship...

Gaye Francis (02:32):

Did fail in any way...

Richard Robinson (02:34):

It could be taken out. And I don't actually know where that's gone. I'm sure Antonio will give us an update, but I was going to explain the due diligence aspects of that. Now, we've been through this before and for numerous things, and we've explained it with regards to the Lake Illawara and the incident at taking out the Hobart Bridge. And you might recall the Cosco Busan, which hit the Golden Gate Bridge. See, marine pilots have a lot of protections under civil law, but when something bad happens, there's an increasing tendency, we sort of talked about blame culture, which has popped up this decade in particular, when something goes wrong...

Gaye Francis (03:07):

Whose fault was it?

Richard Robinson (03:09):

Yeah, whose fault was it? Well, in that particular instance, despite all the sort of legal protections that the marine pilot in San Francisco had, they put him away under environmental legislation for coating birds with oil. So there's always something can come out and get you, if they want to get you, they'll come and get you these days.

Gaye Francis (03:32):

There's a whole lot of different legislations that apply.

Richard Robinson (03:35):

And it'll be interesting to see. You remember the Boston Bridge got taken out by a ship that went blacked out, and the question was why didn't it have a tug? Because that's the whole point of having tugs. If you know there's something you could take out, you have a tug tied fast the stern so that you can be steered out of the way with the momentum of the ship. So just because when it blacked out, there's nothing that can do. The ship's going to go wherever the ship's pointed or whatever the circumstance, the current and the wind and everything else just pushes you to, that's where you're going to go until you just stall or you drop your anchor and it's going to come to a grinding halt or whatever you've done, but you don't have any choice. And so all this sort of stuff is basically reappearing. And the job is to make sure that for all the credible critical scenarios, you've got measures in place so that really bad things don't happen, such as hitting the Golden Gate Bridge or taking out the bridge in Boston or taking out the control tower in Genoa.

Gaye Francis (04:23):

And I think that's some of the feedback from the marine pilots when we've done jobs for them, is by using the due diligence approach, it actually allows them to get additional resources and the things that they need in place to make the passage safe. Because the things that they are dealing with are high consequence, very, very low likelihood events. And when they were used to do it on a risk basis, it never got over the line.

Richard Robinson (04:44):

Because you discount the high consequence things by the unlikeliness of the event. Well, you might recall when we had those discussion with the world's largest port of Port Hedland.

Gaye Francis (04:52):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (04:52):

And they did the N -1. We're just borrowing an idea that from the electrical industry. The electrical industry basically says that for any network, should a major conductor fail, the system should ignore it - it should just be able to keep going. But we've noticed because of commercial pressures, the headroom is getting tighter and tighter. And I don't think a lot of networks do have N -1 anymore. But when we're talking about that with regards to ships, because we listened to them for about a morning I think, it was marine pilots talking about it, and we just sort of said, hang on a minute, you need an N minus one argument so that if the engine of the ship fails or one of your tote fails, you've still got a way to bring whatever the situation is home safely. And once they did that, they instantly got another tug applied that obviously bolted off to the, well, I suspect the boards of the large mining companies that use that port. And the idea that you could block a channel with a ship which is now Australia's, well, it's the world's largest by tonnage I believe, port.

Gaye Francis (05:46):

Okay.

Richard Robinson (05:48):

What would happen to Australia if you blocked that port, you had to cut the ship up for six months. It just doesn't bear thinking about it.

Gaye Francis (05:54):

And I think that's what it is, it's that the high consequence, as you said, it's the recovery time as well. And being able to block a channel in a port so it can't be used for a long period of time was unacceptable.

Richard Robinson (06:08):

Well you might remember when the Iron Baron hit the Hebe Reef in Bass Strait, the harbor master wouldn't let it be dragged into Devonport just in case it got suck in the channel and just blocked up the ferry service from between Tasmania and Australia. Because if we do that, it becomes impossible for I think one third of all of New Zealand's exports and imports go through by the ferry, by Davenport.

Gaye Francis (06:33):

So again, criticality argument, and that's how it's been applied to marine pilotage. And I think one of the interesting things, and it's being extended to the port scenario now, so pilotage is one aspect of port operations and an important aspect. And so we've done a number of pilotage reviews for a number of ports around Australia.

Richard Robinson (06:54):

You've got to go to think about a marine pilot. The whole point about having marine pilots is for the critical, don't collide or ground a ship. Okay. It's always critical. That's the only reason why the marine pilot's there.

Gaye Francis (07:06):

Well, it's sort of interesting. They're almost the control in a way, aren't they.

Richard Robinson (07:09):

They are.

Gaye Francis (07:10):

So they've got to have the tools available to them to make sure that they're an effective control.

Richard Robinson (07:14):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (07:15):

So some of the controls that we do put in place to make sure that they've got the right information and additional tug services or assistance and that sort of stuff is all the things that they need to do their job effectively.

Richard Robinson (07:28):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (07:29):

What I was going to say though is that sort of idea is now being expanded out into the whole of port scenario. So it's not just being considered for ships being brought in and out, it's actually for the port operations as a whole.

Richard Robinson (07:45):

Are you trying to describe the recent job we did for Tasports, are you?

Gaye Francis (07:49):

Yes. Well we have done it there, but we've done it at other ports as well. But I think one of those integrated approach, and we sort of touched on it in one of our other, previous podcasts is that integrated approach and not looking at some of the activities in silos will give you a different set of precautions than you would if you just did it in silos.

Richard Robinson (08:08):

Well, that was what we did - one of the Tasport's port. They had a whole lot of industry around, and when you looked at the emergency services that those industry had available, and they were more than willing to help and share and provide their emergency services to the port as a whole, then not just for their own purposes. And as long as you had a sort of mutual aid process. But the advantage was that particular port therefore had more resources than most other ports already available to it.

Gaye Francis (08:34):

So by looking at what you could bring in and the controls that you could put in place to address the issues, all of a sudden you've got to a step level improvement in safety that you might not necessarily have got.

Richard Robinson (08:46):

Well, remember there were two Australian subs that turned up in port, Dechaineux and Rankin turned up, and you don't normally see two Australian subs in one place.

Gaye Francis (08:54):

It was pretty exciting, wasn't it?

Richard Robinson (08:55):

We've only got a few of them and only some of them six and only four probably operational at any given time. The rest have always been worked up and fitted out, refitted and things like that. To see two of them in one place at once. It's quite remarkable.

Gaye Francis (09:07):

I'm not sure how to look at the safety due diligence of the port, but considering all the activities that have to be considered.

Richard Robinson (09:16):

That's correct. And remember there was an ill sailor, they had to get off. And the port actually used the collective resources to actually make it a success.

Gaye Francis (09:26):

Okay, you've got to put that bit in, and I had forgotten that little bit. <laughs>

(09:34):

So our process is no different for pilotage due diligence reviews than any other due diligence review that we do. So we need to have an argument as to why all the credible critical issues have been identified. And in a port, we typically look at all the user groups who they're using there and what activities they're doing. So there's an activities table that you do.

Richard Robinson (09:59):

Yeah, it's like the Twilight Regattas in Hobart. There's all these kids and dinghies running around, you better make sure the big ship in an emergency doesn't run over some <people>.

Gaye Francis (10:09):

Yeah. You then got to look at all the controls that you can put in place, which are reasonable in the circumstances. And then, as I said, you're always a quality assurance system to make sure that the things that you are going to put in place are sustained and managed accordingly. But there will be site specific or port specific issues. Like Richard said, the regattas in Hobart were a particular issue. There's more industry in Bell Bay and in Port Headland for example, there's different weather conditions depending on whether you're on the east coast or the west coast of Australia. So there there's different issues and slight variations in each of the ports and the controls that you'll put in place may be different.

Richard Robinson (10:52):

Indeed. Well, you do the best with what you have available to you. And obviously if you can't get there, then you're going to have to do some extra things. But an awful lot of time, and that's certainly, we've talked about tower partners, other things like that. Competent people do competent things. And so if you've got competent people around, they'll be providing services even if you are not aware that that's available to you. Well, in fact, in all the ports we did, we got all the users together. Remember that was the whole point of the exercise. It's hard to do this stuff in isolation and just have a single expert come in and get it right when you've got multiple potential users and multiple potential resources.

Gaye Francis (11:27):

And I think that was the key thing that came out of it, wasn't it? That there were more resources available than was known by any one party.

Richard Robinson (11:35):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (11:36):

That all of a sudden, if you adopted it collectively for the port use overall, then you got that improvement.

(11:46):

I guess that's a summary of what we're going to talk about at the conference next week (October 2024). So good luck with your presentation, Richard, and thank you for joining us.

Richard Robinson (11:58):

Thank you.