Pilot Ladders – Safe Means of Access or Stairway to Heaven?

Pilots play a vital role in keeping vessels safe and ensuring efficient port operations. Their role on board is to assist and advise a vessels bridge team and their assistance can be invaluable – in short they are on board to help. Clearly they are a resource that should be respected, and more importantly, protected by the vessel.

There are often serious incidents and fatalities to pilots caused during boarding operations. Boarding operations via a pilot ladder are hazardous at the best of times. Even when the weather is fine and all equipment is correctly maintained and deployed it is no easy task boarding by this means. But a study by pilots shows that vessels are not always maintaining and deploying the access arrangements in accordance with best practice. Obviously this may increase the risk of an incident.

Towards the end of 2016 The International Maritime Pilots Association (IMPA) conducted its annual pilot ladder safety survey. The aim of the survey was to monitor compliance levels and to investigate and highlight standards of pilot ladders and associated equipment.

The results indicated that despite many initiatives, designed to improve safety and awareness, the level of non-compliance has remained unchanged over the last few years and remains steady at between 15% and 20%.

Out of the 2709 survey responses bulk carriers were highlighted as one of the ship types with the highest non-compliance levels with over 23% non-compliant boarding arrangements reported. These were closely followed by rig supply vessels (23%) and general cargo vessels (22%). Car carriers had the most positive results with only 8.24% non-compliance reported.

The top two pilot ladder defects noted related to steps not being horizontal and the ladders not resting against the ship’s hull. When a combination access was required nearly a third of all defects arose from the ladders not being secured to the vessels side.

The report notes that deteriorating standards of seamanship are concerning and result in access arrangements not being properly secured. The use of deck tongues and shackles is highlighted as a worrying trend that results in the integrity of the boarding arrangements being reliant on weak single step fittings rather than the stronger side ropes.

Remember that the pilot is important to the vessels safety and efficiency – the least you can offer in return is to respect them by helping to protect their lives.  Always ensure that the pilot ladder access arrangements comply with recognised best practice.

Find Out More

North’s Loss Prevention Hot-Spot on pilot ladders offers practical hints and tips on what to look for when rigging access for a pilot. This should be read in conjunction with the information contained within chapter 22 of the Code of Safe Working Practices for Merchant Seafarers and the IMO approved pilot boarding posters which are available for download in English, Spanish, French and Chinese: 

http://www.impahq.org/downloads.php

/media/72826/Hot-Spots-Pilot-Ladder.PDF

Details of the full IMPA survey results may be downloaded directly from the IMPA website or by following the below link:

http://www.impahq.org/admin/resources/impasafety-broch2016v4lo.pdf