Published on Australian Maritime Safety Authority (https://www.amsa.gov.au)
Owners and masters must take reasonable steps to ensure their vessel and crew are safe, and this includes mitigating the risks presented by fatigue in the workplace. Involving crew in the management of fatigue is a critical part of this mitigation process.
By understanding the causes and consequences of fatigue we can reduce safety hazards and improve health, wellbeing, and performance across the maritime industry.
Fatigue is a state of weariness. It can develop quickly – for example, if you are doing heavy lifting. It can also develop slowly – for example, if you lose an hour of sleep a few nights in a row.
A survey of more than 1000 crew working across a wide range of commercial vessels in Australia found a concerning knowledge gap when it came to identifying and managing fatigue. Of the 1000 survey participants:
Fatigued crew are very likely to make mistakes, putting themselves, others and the environment at risk. Working while fatigued has the same effect as driving while over the legal limit, some of the tell-tale signs are:
Fatigue is a factor that significantly increases the risk of accidents in the workplace. Suffering from fatigue for a prolonged period of time is also associated with serious health conditions like cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disease, mental health issues and stress levels.
Lack of quality sleep, body clock disruptions, work tasks and structure, environmental factors in the workplace, lifestyle including diet and personal responsibilities at home, all influence the onset of fatigue and should be considered as part of a holistic approach to managing fatigue.
Generally, people need between 7-9 hours of sleep per night to perform adequately and effectively. Any less than this can result in fatigue. Most accidents involving fatigue follow a lack of sleep or poor quality sleep. Poor quality sleep is when your sleep is disturbed by things like light, noise, motion, alcohol, drugs or stress. Fatigue can also accumulate when you do not get extra sleep to make up for lost sleep – sometimes referred to as a ‘sleep debt’.
Mitigation: Work with crew members to examine what a typical 24-hour period looks like for them, factoring in the time spent working and time spent on other activities like commuting and being at home with loved ones. Help them identify a window for sleep, where they can have a minimum guaranteed 7 hours of quality, uninterrupted sleep. The need for this should be communicated with the crew member’s support network, which includes their fellow crewmates and loved ones ashore, and factored into workplace operations as an absolute priority.
Humans have evolved to spend about a third of their lives sleeping. Our body clocks naturally program us to be drowsy in the late afternoon and sleep at night. Shift work is sometimes an unavoidable part of working on the water, which is why body clock disruptions must be carefully managed to reduce the risk of fatigue impacting safety.
Mitigation: If possible, avoid scheduling critical operations between the hours of 3am-6am and 3pm-5pm, when crew are most likely to be drowsy or have an urge to sleep. If that’s not possible due to the nature of your operation, ensure other mitigation strategies are in place as outlined in this guidance hub.
Common features of work and job design that lead to fatigue are:
Mitigation: Consider implementing short rest breaks during operations, rotating activities that crew have been assigned to (where appropriate) and creating opportunities for strategic napping. Research shows that naps as short as 10 to 15 minutes can deliver measurable benefits and help maintain performance while staving off fatigue.
The maritime work environment is stressful on crew and can make fatigue from lack of sleep worse. Common environmental stressors on crew are cold, vibration, heat, noise and vessel motion.
Mitigation: If crew are out on the water for a prolonged period of time and need to sleep on the vessel, remove or implement buffers for environmental stressors to facilitate quality, uninterrupted sleep. This can include providing a dark, quiet, warm and comfortable place, as well as adequate time for restorative sleep. Consider minor changes to the physical environment to improve quality of sleep, this could include basic sound proofing and black-out curtains.
The impacts of a crew member’s lifestyle and home demands must be factored into an holistic approach to fatigue management.
Balancing the need for time at work, commuting to and from work, time with loved ones and other personal responsibilities at home often results in sacrifices being made when it comes to quality sleep.
Diet, fitness, alcohol and drug use are lifestyle factors that can also impact quality sleep and a crew member’s susceptibility to fatigue.
Mitigation: Lifestyle factors and home demands may not be within the strict control of a commercial vessel owner or operator, but that doesn’t negate the need to increase awareness of the benefits that a healthy lifestyle and supportive home environment can have on increasing a crew member’s resilience against fatigue. Where it can’t be controlled, it should be factored into operational planning.
You may wish to incorporate the following fatigue risk assessment and management tool into the development of your safety management system. This is an evidence-based tool developed by AMSA in conjunction with leading sleep scientists, which is free for use.
