Bridge Resource Management

“Attitudes speak louder than words”, as emphasised by Capt. Ed Verbeek in his article “BRM – back to the future?” published in Seaways, January 2019 edition. In the article, Capt. Verbeek, one of the first certified BRM Workshop Leaders, reflects on BRM and its development some 25 years after his initiation into “the wonderful world of BRM”.

The objectives and training concept of BRM (or MRM if you prefer) have not changed since BRM was launched in 1993. The focus remains on attitudes and behaviour and not on knowledge and skills, as opposed to technical training. The BRM/MRM facilitator should not teach and instruct, the facilitator should just lead the discussions so the participants find out for themselves what are appropriate behaviours in different situations. The participants should do most of the talking and if the voice of the facilitator is heard the majority of the time, “it might indicate that something is going wrong”.

Capt. Verbeek is worried that today’s BRM course has become “just another course” and deviated from how it was originally conceived. To put it on track again, we need to look back at the founding principles of the course.

To read the whole article, please click here or on the photo below. (The article is uploaded by kind permission and courtesy of Seaways.)

Why separate people in training who work together on board? We don’t think that’s a good idea and this is in fact the main reason we moved from the “old” term Bridge Resource Management (BRM) to Maritime Resource Management (MRM) long time ago now. Martin Hernqvist of ALL Academy, who personally was involved in the development of the first ever BRM course in the early 1990s, admits the term BRM was a dead end.

The benefits of bringing all people together in resource management training was clearly demonstrated by Azalea Maritime in Montenegro during an MRM course carried out in early November 2017. In an article published after the course, Azalea Maritime says:

“The approach to integrate all the resources involved in the maritime business of safe ship operation which started with the integration of the bridge, engine and cargo team into one single team, has proven to be more effective than having these teams in separate trainings.”

Furthermore; “The feedback from all parties involved (trainees, Principal representatives, etc.) was very positive. The training exceeded their expectations based on usual requirements set in resource management courses found elsewhere. All the team members had previously attended resource management training on several occasions, but never experienced the cooperation/common problem solving that all the teams achieved during this Maritime Resource Management.”

Azalea Maritime made extensive use of simulators during the MRM course. Using simulators may help in the implementation of the message of the course but is not a requirement. Click here or on the picture for the full article.