Risk management today in shipping companies

The risks at sea continue to be subject of many shipping documents describing the voyages completed by carriers engaged in maritime trading. The current policies aim for the development of some mutual insurances to cover the risks to which the ships are exposed to and, in particular, the crew which must be reimbursed in case of accidents. Currently, one of the biggest impediments standing in the way of the naval industry’s progress on an international level is the lack of methods for determining risk levels. The volume of commercial activities and the pressure put on the market requires orientation towards new methods and techniques of risk administration, in other words the elaboration of a risk management plan, which, as professor Kuo also said, has the purpose of “maintaining and controlling risks and dangers between certain tolerance margins, to a practically negligible level”. I consider that a coherent managerial plan must include techniques of identifying potential accidents and of analyzing risks, in order to improve the safety measures and to reduce the loss of human lives and also to increase the quality of decisions. The practice of an efficient management requires some quality standards to be set, which must be set progressively after a careful analysis of the organization and of the evolution perspectives. Therefore, synthetically, a system of safety management is based on going through the following steps: elaborating clear policies and safety objectives; planning concerning the development of action plans , with the determination of roles and the assignment of responsibilities; implementing the action plans and the methods; periodical evaluation, by comparing the results obtained with the objectives set; and last but not least, improving performance, by identifying malfunctions, periodical updating of the risk evaluation and by taking corrective measures