Commercial pressure and. A personnel transfer through the pilot access area of a large container vessel went ahead offshore, with severe weather warnings in force and no lee created for boarding. Water was entering the transfer area and vessel movement was heavy.
The job had been called at short notice. Preparation was compressed, and not every person on the transfer had a lifejacket and hard hat.
The person who reported this to CHIRP (report M2862) worked in a contracted support role, not as vessel crew. CHIRP's comment on the case is specific: stop-work authority belongs to everyone involved, contractors included, and it has to be usable in the moment, not just written down. When conditions are that far outside plan, the transfer needed a dynamic risk assessment before continuing, not after.
A contractor under commercial pressure rarely tests whether stop-work authority is real. The test that matters is whether anyone would have backed them if they had.
If a contractor on your operation called a stop today, over weather and PPE like this, what would happen next?
#MaritimeSafety #HumanFactors #RiskAssessment #SafetyManagement #PPE
