Τhe importance of incident and near miss reporting in the development of safety is recognized in many high-risk industries, including shipping. Investigating incidents and near misses is a tool for continuous improvement of Safety Management Systems (SMS) in the sense that learning the lessons from incidents should help to improve safety performance in a proactive way and enhance safety culture.

Although most shipping companies have mandatory internal reporting procedures for safety incidents and near misses within their Safety Management Systems, according to the ISM Code of the SOLAS Convention, voluntary contribution of this information to open reporting systems is generally avoided.

The reasons for this are the existence of a blame culture among seafarers and shipping companies, poor or inappropriate feedback that reinforces mistrust to formal reporting systems and helps maintain the blame culture, complicated reporting systems and wide variations in the definition of incidents and near misses. As a result, the maintaining of a blame culture leads to complex reporting systems that do not support the dissemination of “lessons learned”.

To address these issues, HELMEPA in collaboration with DYNAMARINe, managing member-companies and the project partners created the Voluntary Incident Reporting Platform – VIRP.

The aim of this initiative is for HELMEPA and CYMEPA member- managing companies to voluntarily submit to the platform incident and near-miss reports of their vessels that will be maintained anonymously and will produce useful statistics and ‘lessons learned’ on safety issues. This information can then be incorporated in the risk assessment and the SMS of member companies and will be widely disseminated by HELMEPA to avoid repetition of the same mistakes and incidents.

Particular emphasis is placed on high-potential near-miss incidents, which are reported separately to the VIRP and participating companies are encouraged to separate these from the less important incidents.

Each participating Member Managing Company will receive a special password in an exclusive area on the VIRP online platform, where they will be able to maintain, monitor and manage all incidents and “near-miss” incidents of their vessels. From that point, the company will be able to select the high-risk and near-miss incidents that he will upload to the common area of ​​the electronic platform.

All incidents and near-miss reports submitted to the Platform are anonymous. Moreover, they are checked by HELMEPA so that any “sensitive” data that may lead to identification of individuals or vessels are removed. Useful statistics and results on trends and gaps on safety issues will be disseminated to participants through the VIRP platform and HELMEPA electronic updates.

The following HELMEPA Member Companies have supported the creation of the VIRP since the beginning, by providing useful tips and information and through the submission of incident and near-miss reports.