MCA joins industry leaders to discuss training standards for autonomous shipping

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is taking part in an event designed to drive forward training standards for remote operators of autonomous surface ships today. 

The webinar, organised by geo-data company Fugro, is being held to engage with industry, academics and non-governmental organisations on how best to establish competencies and training standards.

It is part of the pioneering MASSPeople project, which the MCA is a partner in as a world-leader in safe testing and development of autonomous shipping.

Robert Gale, from the MCA’s Maritime Future Technologies team said it was an important step in the ongoing work to establish competencies and training standards for remote operators.

He said: “It’s important for the UK to continue to drive the new standards and safety regime to shape the future of training for autonomous shipping globally.


Copyright: 2019 Studio concept/Shutterstock

“We’re taking part in this webinar today to continue our engagement with industry and academia over how best to support this project even further. We will be asking them to take part in a questionnaire which we can then take into consideration with our further work.”

To access the questionnaire, click here.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is a founding member of MASSPeople with global geo-data company Fugro and Seabot XR, an agency for next generation learning products and services.

As a founding member, the MCA has also invited selected flag states to take part in an International Training Standards working group as part of the working group which this engagement will help support.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Five ships detained after inspection following concerns raised about crew welfare

Image
Five out of the six ships inspected today by Maritime and Coastguard Agency surveyors have been detained. The Astoria, Astor, Colombus and Vasco de Gama at Tilbury have all been detained. The Marco Polo at Bristol has also been detained following its inspection. All five are from the same company – Global Cruise Lines Limited. Four of the vessels are flagged with the Bahamas and one with Portugal (Madeira) . Surveyors found a number of expired and invalid Seafarers Employment Agreements, late payment of wages and crews who had been on board for over 12 months. All these are in breach of the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) and the ships have been detained for that reason.  Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps said: “The welfare of seafarers is of the utmost importance and we take any reports of safety concerns around crew incredibly seriously. "Following today’s investigation, five ships have been detained and we will not hesitate to continue to use every po...
Read more

Oral exams to be held online under plans from Maritime and Coastguard Agency

Image
Engineering oral exams will commence online from 11 May under new plans announced by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. In addition, the MCA is also actively working on plans to provide an online way of carrying out Deck oral exams. Marine offices will get in contact with candidates who had previously had theirs cancelled to arrange new dates but everyone is being asked not to get in touch while the backlog is cleared. Katy Ware, Director of Maritime Safety and Standards said: ‘We completely understand people are anxious to get their all important exams done but we can’t accept any new oral exam bookings until we have cleared the backlog of those who had theirs cancelled because of Covid-19.’ ‘We will publish a MIN later this month to provide further guidance on accepting new applications for oral exams. The MIN will also provide timelines for the future booking of exams; for those who hold Notice of Eligibilities (NOEs), those who have applied for NOEs and those who are abou...
Read more

Shortlist of bidders announced for the next decade of Coastguard search and rescue aviation

Image
The shortlist of companies being invited to tender for the next generation of search and rescue aviation has been announced by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. From today (10 June), the shortlisted bidders will be invited to tender for the UK Second-Generation Search and Rescue Aviation programme – known as UKSAR2G – to provide HM Coastguard search and rescue helicopters, planes and remotely piloted drones. The UKSAR2G invitation to tender will be issued to these shortlisted bidders to provide their responses by the end of August this year: Lot 1: Rotary, shorter endurance with standard carriage capacity for short range rescue work Bristow Helicopters Ltd EEA Helicopters Operations B.V Serco Limited Lot 2: Rotary; High endurance with larger carriage capacity for long range/multiple casualty rescues Bristow Helicopters Ltd EEA Helicopters Operations B.V. Serco Limited Lot 3: Fixed-wing, manned and potentially unmanned for rapid search, surveillance and pollution identification 2Excel...
Read more