The absence of accidents today does not imply that you will be safe tomorrow Over the last five years DNV have been working with more than 30 shipping companies in projects aimed to reach safety excellence. In many cases the clients have had many years of good safety performance before one or more major accident shakes the company to the roots. At this stage the accident has already occurred, and our consultancy can only help the client in a new positive direction. But in most cases, the accident could have been prevented and the decrease in safety performance has gone through several stages - from overconfidence to collapse. Some signs of declining safety performance are:

Stage 1: Overconfidence

Good past performance takes heals the fear of accidents and makes safety something the management tacitly assume is under control.

Stage 2: Complacency

Minor incidents, near misses or poor audits or inspections begin to appear, but they are seen as isolated occurrences and that they do not reflect the overall safety performance of the company. “After all things have gone well for a long time, there are also a range of performance indicators that are still good- we have to expect and accept some poor indications”. This self-satisfaction lead to delay or cancelation of improvement programmes.

Stage 3: Denial

The number of incidents increases – some are significant. Still they are all seen as isolated cases. Management tend to reject criticism coming from internal audits, inspections and individual whistleblowers. Some external parties such as regulators and insurance also starts to question the performance. The belief develops that the findings are biased and that there is unjust criticism of the company and the management. This further increases the threshold to inform or confront top level management with poor performance indications.

Stage 4: Collapse

This phase is easy to recognise as the problems become clear to all parties, also clients, and external parties needs to make additional investigations or assessments. Top level management is often overwhelmed and usually needs to be replaced. A major improvement programme usually has to be implemented.