Application of human reliability analysis to repair & maintenance operations on-board ships: The case of HFO purifier overhauling

Maintenance and repair at the operational level is a critical function to comply with the standard of competence for officers in charge of an engineering watch in a manned/unmanned ship engine room. The human factor in ship maintenance especially deals with fulfilling of the required competency about dismantling, inspecting, repairing and reassembling equipment in accordance with manuals and good practice stated in STCW Code, as amended in 2010. This study extends the shipboard operation human reliability analysis (SOHRA) through the marine auxiliary machinery maintenance operations. The approach involves the determined marine-specific error producing conditions (EPC) and generic task type parameters to quantify generic error probability (GEP) values along with the subtasks of the maintenance operation. To acquire the EPC and GEP values, the real case study on heavy fuel oil (HFO) purifier overhauling considers different operating conditions on-board selected five ships in a dry bulk fleet. The case study shows that human error probability (HEP) values of tasks in maintenance operation change in regard to ship operating conditions. Consequently, the study contributes to the marine engineering field in improving the human factor in ship repair and maintenance operations. This approach is further extended by incorporating maintenance 4.0 requirements into ship operating environment to conduct scenario-based task analysis.