A ship that carries complex machinery and has human sustenance as the responsibility, really needs sailors to put in every ounce of their energy. The tediousness of sea jobs puts fatigue as the major concern. Various research findings show fatigue as a significant culprit in many shipping accidents.
Fatigue on-board is a factor of the rest hours allowed to crew members. Being continuously available at their workspace and traveling through time zones affects the sleep schedule of seafarers. The rolling and pitching of ships and the high stress levels add to the challenges. The consequences range from a drop in efficiency of the crew and the vessel to accidents causing grave injuries to the crew and the ship.
What Do Rules Say About Rest Hours Onboard?
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) defines rest hours on board as the number of hours a seafarer is relieved off his duty, excluding the short breaks during work hours. The ILO’s MLC 2006, STCW 2010, and OPA-90 have set the requirements for work and rest hours onboard.
International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) and STCW Section A-VIII/1 (Fitness for duty) put forward the legal minimum rest hours onboard to be 10 hours in any 24-hour period. Following the Manila amendments to the STCW code, the STCW 2010 requirements for rest hours have been made commensurate with the MLC requirements. These regulations define a minimum of 77 rest hours in a span of 7 days.
Moreover, the rest hours can’t be split into more than two periods, with at least one period comprising of a minimum of 6 rest hours. The gap between two split periods should not exceed 14 hours.
The ship must also plan safety drills with minimal impact on the rest hours. The time spent on these is treated as work hours.
The maintenance of work and rest hours of each crew member on board is mandated. Non-compliance to the set rules can even lead to the detention of the vessel at port.
How to Ensure Compliance with Rest Hours Regulations?
Rest hours regulations are stringent, and compliance is complex. The shore-based ship owners, charters or management companies do not have adequate visibility into the operations their ships. On the other hand, largely manual systems of recording rest hours like excel sheets and even some software are prone to human error and data manipulation.
The risk and cost of non-conformities and non-compliance is significant. This is where the TAMS Rest Hours software comes to the rescue. This is an extraordinary digital achievement in the maritime industry that not only makes compliance simple, but also helps eliminate human error and false record-keeping.
Rest Hours Software: A Boon for Shipping Professionals
Here are the advantages of using rest hours software:
- Creates a culture of safety and efficiency onboard.
- Assists the crew to easily plan for work and rest hours in compliance with the regulations of ILO/ MLC 2006, STCW 2010, and OPA-90.
- Maintenance of non-conformities and manila exceptions to minimize the risk of vessel detention.
- Electronic maintenance of work and rest hours logbook.
- Instant reports for vessel audits and inspections.
Why Choose a 100% Cloud-Based Rest Hours Software?
The TAMS Rest Hours software is the only 100% cloud-based software. What does that mean for ship owners, ship charterers and ship management companies?
No installations on board required: If your ships have internet connectivity, you do not need to install any hardware on the vessels to adopt the TAMS Rest Hours software. This means there is no cost of switching from your existing system to the TAMS Rest Hours software.
Visibility into each ship in the fleet: With the TAMS Rest Hours software, the shore office gets almost real-time access to the planning of work and the status of non-conformities on each ship.
Why Choose the TAMS Rest Hour Software?
The TAMS Rest Hours software provides a financially viable, transparent, and systematic tool to regulate, monitor, and comply with rest hours requirements. Apart from being 100% cloud based, the TAMS Rest Hours software has many amazing features, including:
Easy to user interface: The software has an intuitive interface. Moreover, every step has detailed on-screen instructions. The software also comes with an exhaustive user manual.
Dashboards for easy consumption of data: There are different views for different stakeholders.
- Superintendents can review the crew plan for up to 14 days from a single screen. They can also set up alerts to get a notification when a non-conformity occurs.
- Vessel Managers can easily view the non-conformities of the day.
- Fleet Managers can check the status of non-conformities on all ships in the fleet. They can get an overall view and drill down into any ship they choose.
With the TAMS Rest Hours software, you can:
- Plan activities in advance
- Log daily hours of work and rest of each seafarer
- Ensure compliance with intricate rules and their exceptions
- Remain compliant in emergency situations
- Handle short breaks and mealtimes
- Ensure compliance in watchkeeping ships
- Single click entry of work hours for all crew members for events like drills
- Effortlessly add port stays to alter default working hours for all crew members
- Single screen planning of work for multiple crew members having dependencies on each other
- Identify crew members who can be assigned tasks without violating the act
- Remembers crew details if they had earlier sailed on a different vessel of the company
- Time adjustments during the ship’s voyage
- Manage International Date Line (IDL) crossing
- Highlights NCs (non-conformities) for easy course correction
- Calculates overtime for integration with payroll
- When NCs are unavoidable, plan and track compensatory rest hours for crew
- Easy tracking of NCs compensated and outstanding
- Maintain details for audits
With these stand-out features and extraordinary 24*7 customer support, the TAMS Rest Hours software has benefited more than 100,000 crew members onboard over 500 vessels.
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