DP Self-Training

Introduction: I was going to go from dynamic positioning (DP) fuel oil to lube oil systems and work my way through the DP auxiliary systems, but received an interesting question and decided to tackle it instead:

Question: I’m relatively new to DP and learning a lot. I’ve been reading through the DP FMEA, DP manuals, and specialized operating mode (type obscured by me) manuals. What do you recommend?

Answer: What I’m going to advise is mostly action on your part. I assume that you have had some DP schooling and got a piece of paper. That’s a bit like purchasing tools. Now you have to figure out how to use them in the field. You have been given a few hints, but the classroom and actual operation are different things. Some of the hints may have been wrong or not apply to the vessel that you are operating. Fortunately, you are going to work with experienced tool users, and most people like helping someone else out. Recognize that you have limited training but the training still can be good, and they have much more experience but may have gotten into bad habits. This isn’t something to fight over, this is something to learn from. You are going to have to absorb a lot of information, which means you are going to have to do a lot of review, so you don’t get confused. You need to learn your ship, its systems, its procedures, its people, and its culture.

Principles: I like to start with basic principles. Let’s start with why you are there and the secret assumed background of all DP operations. DPOs & DPEs don’t babysit DP systems, it’s the other way round, DP control systems and automation systems are an unreliable aid for DPOs & DPEs. The crew ensure safe position keeping position through proper procedures, maintenance, communication, culture, observation, and correction. They aren’t just there to catch errors in control systems, the crew are what makes DP redundancy work in the first place, and the equipment helps. Note the DP engineers have an important role in this. That is something that has been lost over the last 20 years or so, as DP strangely became deck centric. The “secret assumed background” are basic operations that used to be known by all DP crew, but have diminished over time, as sellable classroom instruction became more important. These basic operating assumptions are fundamental to good DP operations. Petrobras put some of them into their DP Golden Rules. Read and apply those, and my proposed extras in the comments to this post. Reread them until you reflexively use them. A check list or Post-it note can help. If you live and breathe these principles, you are off to a good start.

Culture: If the crew is the most important thing on the ship and what really makes it work, then you need to understand your coworkers and ship culture. This doesn’t mean playing mind games. It does mean being polite, professional, helpful, and fitting in. It means recognizing your own and other people’s fallibility and not taking it personally. It means getting along despite differences in style, personality, and beliefs. It will soon be found that differences in thinking are useful, so long as everyone aims at the same goals. The crew need to pull together to accomplish DP goals. Encourage the positive in others and be positive yourself, but recognize your limited position and role. People earn their way up, and the new guy is at the bottom for a while. On the other hand, there need to be lines, and some people need to be warned when they are approaching them. Unprofessional behavior sometimes needs dealt with. This can be personally risky, but is important to a safe working culture. If handled well, respect is gained.

Know Your Ship: Learn every menu and submenu and what everything means on each screen. Can you draw the DP desk while sitting in your cabin? Can you get it right? Repeat until you can. How about each screen? Can you find the right control by touch? Don’t operate that way, always pause and confirm (all actions purposeful and limited), but calibrate your reactions. One experienced captain likes to say that a good DPO keeps his hands in his pockets. I like scanning through trends and parameters to improve monitoring, but consider what he means. Settings should not be played with, but problems need found before they become big. What problems can you see on the independent DGPS screen that the DP control system hasn’t detected yet and how? What is the difference between the water current and the DP current, and when should you become worried about it? What are the real redundant thrust levels for each thruster? What is that in kW or MW? Do the thruster DP feedback and kW feedback agree? Does the azimuth wash go in the same direction as the DP display? Feel the ship and hear the sounds. Learn to correlate them with the vessel response and environment. Sometimes you will feel something wrong before the monitoring systems know. Your particular ship is the ultimate place to learn DP for that ship, as you have good access to systems, experts, and information.

Know Your Procedures: Every vessel is an orphan and different from even sister ships, so while generic procedures are useful, vessel specific procedures are essential. These must be known and become second nature during DP critical operation. What does the ASOG say? Is it right? If it isn’t ask. (Many ASOGs don’t get the redundant thrust levels right) What are the vessel specific standing orders? What equipment limits are noted? Are there any control anomalies? Did you give and receive a good turn over? Ask people questions. Tell people how you think something works and ask them to correct something that is wrong. It's no fun being wrong, but it's better to find it and kill it off when safe, rather than find out in an emergency. Ask for regular IJS and manual control practice when safe, so you can reliably do it in an emergency when the DP control system dies (yes, that’s when, not if). You need to develop the feel. What equipment is in what redundancy group and what are their limits? Why is a particular operating configuration required? What are the consequences when that is violated? What does the FMEA say? How is the FMEA wrong? (Many are)

Know Your Documentation: Read everything actively. Sometimes information is wrong and you need to catch that. Actively thinking and questioning what you read means that you get more out of it and remember the lessons better. You don't want to memorize text, you want to make the good stuff your own and integrate it with your thinking. Everyone thinks slightly differently and adaption is always needed. Ask yourself questions about everything you read (why, what if, how…). Develop the habit of curiosity, so your mind grabs onto things it doesn't understand and works on them in the background. Markup and make your own notes on each document. This is easy with personal pdfs. Strangers wrote the documents, but they need to become yours.

Know Your Theory: Sure, you got some of this with the paper, but it will fade unless constantly renewed. You also might not have gotten much of it, some of it might not have been right, and there is always more being learned. Fortunately there are lots of sources. IMCA is a good source, but may not be a free one for you. I have a preference for free sources, so I’m going to highlight the free ones. Most of my articles are meant to be decent introductions to different topics. For example, read the DP control system ones and read the others as they become useful to you. Even better, go to dynamic-positioning.com. That’s the web page for the Marine Technology Society’s DP Committee, and they give good stuff away for free, in hopes of improving safe DP operations. They have good free guidelines and conference presentations on most subjects that you want to know. For the conference presentations, start at the old stuff and work your way through, as the old stuff often introduces and explains a topic. For a more systematic approach go to their guidelines. The most useful items there are the design philosophy, the operations guidance, and training guidance. There are a lot more good guidelines there. For example, the TechOps cover various problem areas, such as the competency addendum. So there are two MTS documents that directly cover training. If you live in Houston and get a presentation accepted, you can go to the MTS DP Conference for free. The same might be true of other DP conferences? There are many free sources, but some are sales related. Then there is mandatory paid training such as DP CPD, so you may as well do it with the best company. Don’t do it instead of your own studies. Do that as a supplement. Be wary of free and paid sources, and think your way through both, so you can avoid mistakes and develop your own mental model.

Learn From Failure: Don’t hide your mistakes, as you end up hiding and forgetting your lessons. Learn from other people’s mistakes as much as possible. The IMCA DP Event Bulletins are an excellent source of these. Read one event every day, to keep in mind what you are doing and why. Read it slow, a line at a time, put yourself in the operator’s position so you can learn, and try to anticipate what went wrong and why. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes. Discuss them with the senior DPOs and gain their insights. There is also usually a suggested test that is worth discussing. When you have worked your way through the DP events, then start working your way through the IMCA Annual DP Incident reports a few pages at a time and use them the same way. IMCA has generously made many of these free. They are more bare bones, but cover a wider variety of incidents. They give you an idea of what to look out for and practices to avoid. MTS only provides a handful of LFIs and has failed to learn to use the word “lessons” rather than “learnings”.

EBT: So far, I have written all of this off the top of my head, but compare that with the aeronautical evidence based training. Look at the components that they found important. They are practical skill sets that are needed for safe operation. This is the type of training that used to happen on vessels, but too much of it was lost when we started using paper substitutes. They’re important for DP:

1. Application of Procedures – Not just good procedures, but how they are used
2. Communication – I hinted at this, but this is a major factor in incidents in both industries
3. Automation – You have to know how it works to catch it not working, and you have to know how to control and monitor it. Since technical people were chased off of DP systems, we aren’t as good at the first.
4. Manual Control – IJS is the big ticket item here. Manual sticks and DP joystick (full and partial) are also important. What do you do when the automatic control fails? What do you do when the network fails?
5. Leadership/Teamwork – As someone new, it’s teamwork. How to be a good team member.
6. Problem Solving/Decision Making – We have ASOG and they have checklists, but both groups need to use the tools well, and be able to make decisions that the tools don’t cover.
7. Situational Awareness – Understanding of wind, wave, current, sensor & industrial mission needs, equipment loads and alarms, position, heading, vessel response, loss of redundancy, changing conditions, etc. The DP system can’t handle some problems and requires the operator to avoid or correct trouble.
8. Workload Management – DPOs on the desk do DP only. Don’t get rushed. Don’t allow someone else to get rushed. But be prepared to handle or help handle emergencies. The operator has limits. Training improves those limits by making the unfamiliar familiar.

The associated article is good, worth reading and considering, and contains links to manuals at the end. I suspect someone could make a very good DP training program by adapting EBT to DP. DPOs won't go far wrong by taking ideas from it.

Conclusion: As you might guess, this is an expansion of my earlier private answer. In the end, this is just a start, a way to get your feet under you, plus resources and a methodology to keep you on your feet, keep learning, and remembering lessons. Crew members should help keep each other sharp. It isn’t the job of some remote person in another organization, who has no idea how your ship actually operates and no stake in its failure. This is a job for people with skin in the game, which starts with crew training crew, and management supporting training. Of course, your training has the most effect on yourself, so make it good, even if it’s only on your part. Anything worth doing is worth doing right.