In an initiative to raise awareness of potential hazards at sea, The Standard Club and the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) have joined forces to launch a ‘Spot the Hazard’ competition open to any seafarer worldwide. With $10,000 of prize money, the competition has been designed to help those working at sea identify hazards and to promote the critical importance of accident prevention.
Seafarers entering the competition will be asked to identify hazards shown on a series of images depicting typical scenes on board ship. Seafarers are also invited to submit a safety idea relevant to the image[i] that can be shared throughout the industry.
In order to ensure that seafarers from all ship departments and of all ranks can enter the competition, it features five separate images: the bridge, engine room, main-deck, galley and a port terminal scene. (These have been developed with the kind assistance of Witherby Publishing Group.) The instructions for entry into the competition have also been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, Hindi and Mandarin. Seafarers can submit entries for as many of the five images as they wish, with the winner for each being awarded a prize of $2,000.
To be chosen as a winner, entrants must spot all ten hazards correctly and submit the best safety idea in the category, which will be decided by the judging panel consisting of The Standard Club, ICS and an independent third party.
Yves Vandenborn, Director of Loss Prevention, Charles Taylor & Co, manager of The Standard Club said: “Every year there are thousands of accidents that could have been prevented and we want to encourage all those working at sea to identify hazards and deal with them effectively. This competition has been designed to both raise awareness of what constitutes a hazard and to encourage an innovative approach to safety. We believe that everyone on board a ship is responsible for its safety and this is why we have made sure that the competition is open to serving seafarers of all ranks and nationalities.”
ICS Secretary General, Peter Hinchliffe, said: “ICS is committed to the promotion of an effective safety culture throughout the global shipping industry. We therefore want to help seafarers understand the relationship between unsafe acts and serious incidents. Our goal in launching this new competition is to encourage all seafarers to think about safety as a matter of course during their everyday duties.”
