Drills and exercises

SOLAS III/19.3.2 — FOR-2014-07-01-1019 «Regel 30 Øvelser»Each member of the crew shall participate in at least one abandon ship drill and one fire drill every month. The drills shall take place within 24 hours of leaving port if more than 25 per cent of the crew have not participated in drills on board that ship in the previous month.

The 25 per cent rule is the one every crewing office knows and almost no system can answer, because answering it needs three things at once: who is on board right now, which of them took part in a drill on this ship in the last month, and when the vessel is leaving. Most systems have the first, half of the second, and none of the third.

NoRemarks computes the interval per shift and per person, because a vessel on two rotations is really two crews and a drill the other crew attended does not cover this one. The departure check reads the live crew list, so it is a real answer rather than a reminder.

• Per shift and per person, not per vessel. A drill held on the blue crew does not discharge the green crew’s obligation, and a person who joined yesterday is behind whatever the ship did last week. Both are computed, not assumed.
• The departure check, answered before the vessel sails. One screen says whether more than a quarter of the people currently on board have not drilled on this ship in the last month — and therefore whether a drill is owed within 24 hours of leaving.
• A statutory catalogue to start from. Abandon ship, fire, enclosed space rescue, man overboard, steering gear, damage control and the rest, with the interval each carries in law, editable where the company drills more often than the minimum.
• A drill is a record, not a tick. Scenario, muster time, equipment used, who took part, what went badly and what is being done about it. The last field is the one an inspector reads.
• My drills. A seafarer can see their own drill history without asking anybody — which is also what they need when they join a new vessel.
• Fire drill intervals from the Norwegian fire regulation. FOR-2014-07-01-1099 sets requirements beyond SOLAS for vessels under the Norwegian flag. The catalogue carries them so the plan is right on a Norwegian ship without anybody editing it.

• Drill board — due, overdue, and the departure check
• My drills — a person’s own history
• The drill log, with the record behind each entry

Most systems send an email on the first of the month. That is a reminder about a calendar, and SOLAS III/19.3.2 is not about a calendar — it is about the composition of the crew standing on the deck when the vessel leaves the berth.

Getting that right required the drill engine to read the embarkation records, which is why the crew module and the drills module are not separate products here.