The Human Element by UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency – Making Sense of Things

The First Part of “The Human Element” – Getting Under Way

Within the first chapter of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s guide “The Human Element – A Guide to Human Behavior in the Shipping Industry.” it is point out that even though it is called the human element, it is not an inconsequential aspect of the story. The human element is not like the weather, where one can only shrug one’s shoulders and hope for the best. It is quite the opposite as it is the main factor and main influence point – after all, humans and their configured tools carry out all the actions.

Human nature is separated into eight aspects, which are combined to make the human element:

People actively make sense of things
People take risks
People make decisions
People make mistakes
People get tired/ stressed out
People learn
People work with each other
People communicate

Every aspect is prone to errors.

The Second Part of “The Human Element” – Making Sense of Things

People are surrounded by vast amounts of information and need to make sense of it all. We need that information to support our goals and plans, as they cannot withstand a changing world without adapting to the current situation. Nevertheless, before we can use information to modify our plans, we need to choose the information to process and the sense that we give to it.

This process is heavily influenced by a number of things, most importantly culture, experience, social needs, and character. As in the office ashore, the manager’s door might be open to welcome everyone, a strong symbol of a welcoming mind, or it might be open in order to spy on his underlings. How do you judge? It is one situation, but according to your perception of the person’s character and attributes and to your experience in other companies, your judgment alters.

To share the sense that we make of information, we need empathy and communication skills; otherwise, we will not be able to transfer reason and meaning. However, even when we can transfer this successfully, we might have been betrayed by our own minds and chosen the wrong thing to transfer. Our minds are picky; they like to find evidence that supports our current assumptions and decisions.

Sense-making plays a vital role in almost all shipping accidents. As Lloyds Register states, on average there are 182 large vessels lost per year. Between 1995 and 2007, this amounted to 160 million gt.

For example a US Coast Guard training cutter was rammed in 1978 by a vessel four times the cutter’s size. How did it happen? It happened when the captain of the Coast Guard vessel noticed an approaching ship. Both vessels were running at full speed and quickly closed up to each other. The captain saw only two signal lights on the vessel, and therefore assumed that it was heading in the same direction as he was. His crew members saw three signal lights and knew the ship was coming towards them but did not attempt to communicate this, as it seemed to be obvious. Meanwhile, the captain rationalized to himself the fast-closing speed (as seen on the radar) with the simultaneous overtaking of a fishing boat.

Eleven men died. The captain’s sense-making was wrong as well as the communicational behavior of the crew.

The Problem with Making Sense

As we can understand from the example, the patterns and situations that create a problem primarily exist in the heads of people, hence they are unique. Regulators today tend to close the exposed gaps with stricter regulation and new technical procedures. Therefore the rule books grow bigger, creating uncertainty and greater complexity. At the same time, people become lulled into a false sense of safety provided by the technical crutches.

The guide quotes: “Automation creates new human weaknesses…and amplifies existing ones,” reminding us that humans need to keep pace.

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