CARES has time-served Master mariners in place with decades of experience, enabling a professional incident or accident investigation to take place so corrective actions may be carried out.

The investigation may be required for ascertaining if an asset is up to the task as per contractual requirements, or assist in legal proceedings on behalf of a client, or may be required as a ‘second opinion’ to a company’s initial internal investigation and conclusions.

A brief example of investigations carried out to date include:

Incident A – DP2 vessel having a DP run off.

Conclusion – It was found the capability plots that had been provided by the vessel builder and not a by third party were incorrect. Although the vessel was DP2 the available power was not as indicated on the capability plots.

Incident B – DP2 collision with platform.

Findings – Although an internal investigation was carried out, it failed to recognise a blackout situation, manual intervention was required for the breaker to an auxiliary pump to be started. The fuel valves supplying the auxiliary engines were also found to be in the closed position preventing fuel to be supplied to the auxiliary engines.

Incident C – DP pipelaying vessel had to go into manual mode, resulting in a loss of position and almost critically injuring a welder positioned at a welding station.

Findings – Whilst the investigation was ongoing it was found upon a DP screen freeze the Client Rep was ordering DPO’s to go into DP Joystick mode which was not necessary as the vessel was still holding position on Auto DP mode with the screen freeze display in question only requiring a re-boot.