A systems engineering approach to implementation of safety management systems in the Norwegian fishing fleet

The fishing industry is plagued by a long history of fatality and injury occurrence. Commercial fishing is hence recognized as the most dangerous and difficult of professional callings, in all jurisdictions. Fishing vessels have their own unique set of hazards, a myriad collection of complex occupational accident potentials, barely controlled, co-existing in a perilous work environment. The work in this article is directed by the Norwegian Systematic Health, Environmental and Safety Activities in Enterprises (1997) (Internal Control Regulations [1]), the ISM Code [2] for vessels and their recent applicability to the fishing fleet of Norway. Both safety management works place requirements on the vessel operators and crew to actively manage safety as an on-going concern. The application of these safety management system (SMS) control documents to fishing vessels is just the latest instalment in a continual drive to improve safety in this sector. The difficulty is that there has been no previous systematic approach to safety within the fishing fleet. This article uses the tenants of systems engineering to determine the requirements for such a SMS, detailing the limiting factors and restrictive issues of this complex operating environment.