HELMET supports a multi-angle ‘human centered preventive’ approach from a different perspective with the aim to ensure that the onshore personnel, the vessel and the seafarers is in an improved compliance and safety status compared to the initial status prior to commencement of the said assessment.

Current audits show only the identification of non-conformances towards rules or industry’s standards. It is a static process that is judged by the parties involved as a very exhausting, time consuming and sometimes bureaucratic inspection, particularly for the ship operator and seafarers. At the moment, while detection of non-conformance is present, assistance to the seafarers or ship operators to ensure ‘compliance’ after the identification of findings is not rendered by the inspector.

This is the most crucial part that the industry yearns for, with the aim to ensure that the ship, at the end of the vetting process, will not be ‘sentenced’ to rejection for findings that may have been overlooked and have escaped the attention of the ship operator or seafarers.

HELMET is a preventive holistic approach whose main purpose is to identify human-centered risk at its early stage, eliminate it or place it under monitoring and shape the safety profile. Categorizing the ship or the company as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on the findings, without allowing room for rectification, as it is the current practice, does not help in real life resolve issues but rather just record them and penalize the auditee.

HELMET assessment targets at evaluating the current ship condition, management, the human element and its impact to the ship operation and at the same time:

a) provide adequate support/consultancy to ‘assesses’, as necessary, for ensuring conformance with the rules/regulations/best practices and aiming at improving seafarers technical knowledge
b) highlight and explain the importance of critical thinking of people involved in ship operation
c) highlight the importance of maintaining a safety culture
d) explain, by utilizing examples, the importance of pro-active thinking
e) ensure smooth ‘transfer of shipping knowledge’ from old school shipping to the new generation
f) Assist to the rectification of findings by proposing best practices aiming at increasing the safety business profile

HELMET is in line with BIMCO circular for dry bulk marine risk assessment and it is addressed to dry bulk ship managers for internal auditing purposes onboard or onshore who aim at ensuring high quality, enhancement of risk perception, compliance with current and/or upcoming rules and dry bulk industry’s standards (DBMS). It can also be used by ship operators interested to promote their safety business status aiming to attract investors, better financial terms, more ships under their management as well as benefit from potentially better insurance and chartering deals.

HELMET brings into the dry bulk shipping industry:
a. Awareness & continuous improvement
b. Safe working conditions
c. Detection and placement of system and human-centered non-conformances under control
d. Improvement/enhancement of seafarers skills and their risk perception
e. Indexes for extracting numerous conclusions
f. Quality assurance and performance improvement