Prevention at Sea
Prevention at Sea is a Risk Assessor and maritime technology firm. Founder and CEO of Prevention at Sea is Mr Petros Achtypis who, in 2013, decided to invest in pro-active thinking and new technologies. Prevention at Sea believes that the ‘key’ to moving forward in this complex industry is by implementing the concept of ‘prevention’ – thus safeguarding life, property and the environment and at the same time enhancing the human element – by combining old school shipping with technology.
Since the founding of Prevention at Sea, our aim has been to provide innovative tools and services to monitor performance, analyze, simplify and standardize procedures, ensure compliance with the rules, design modern assessment techniques, and enhance the human element factor by helping shipping entities to maintain a safe working environment and fulfil their strategic goals.
Prevention at Sea is an LR certified entity under ISO 9001 for delivering marine risk assessment services for quality assurance purposes.
More info about Prevention at Sea: https://preventionatsea.com/
Our culture
PAS is a multi-national family. Our shared core values of honesty, integrity, trust and respect for people, underpin all the work we do and are the foundation of our principles. We believe in the notion of ‘prevention’; therefore, unpleasant incidents are preventable by mitigating or controlling risks.
Mission and Vision
Our vision is ‘to become a worldwide reputable and trustworthy maritime data house, profiling and risk prevention firm’
Our mission is ‘to prevent undesired costly incidents as well as ensure efficient and safe ‘sailing’ by offering diversified innovative tools and auditing schemes’.
Why HELMET
Over recent years the shipping industry has started to recognise the importance of the human element. This is underlined through numerous papers and reports published by international organisations and leading companies of the industry.
However, despite the adoption of multiple industry initiatives, rules and procedures, conventional audit results analysed by Prevention at Sea and the Centre of Excellence in Risk and Decision Sciences of the European University in Cyprus (CERIDES) show that the early warning signals of unsafe practices are not being detected. This directly compromises safe fleet operations, impacts reputation, and leads to accidents and financial losses. As the industry evolves, stakeholders are recognising the need to recenter around the human element and increase proactivity in nurturing a safe business culture.
Records prove that more than 70% of accidents affecting maritime safety are attributed to wrong judgement, lack of use of common sense and critical thinking, miscommunication and lack of shipping knowledge. All summarized under the term ‘human element’ failure.
The numerous audits and inspections carried out on board ships or ashore every year, prove through records that incidents affecting the smooth operations resulting in severe consequences frequently occur and/or attributed to the ‘human element’; if those incidents are added to the aforementioned 70% then the said percentage approaches a level of 85-90%; thus, it is evident that a critical aspect which triggers the aforesaid consequences has been underestimated or has not been sufficiently addressed so far. At the same time ‘compliance’ remains a ‘key’ word and at the very center of the on-going debate.
Prevention at Sea believes that the root cause of the above stems from the following:
- Shortage of skillful seafarer and shipping professionals – expected to increase in the future
- Incorrect interpretation of the ISM code
- Minimum investment in enhancing human skills
- Increase in new challenges and unknown risks due to new technologies
- Power of willful ignorance
- Absence of modern and continuous training and professional development of seafarers and shipping professionals on a technical and interpersonal level by utilizing new technologies
- Insufficient ‘transfer of technical knowledge’ from old school shipping to the new generation
- Absence of critical thinking amongst seafarers as the ship operators aim to rule or establish procedures which most of the times result in mechanical thinking and blind implementation with no room for individual positive judgement.
