The analysis of the competency issues of crew on offshore support vessel

The offshore support vessel (OSV) can significantly accelerate the development process of offshore oil resource by providing a variety of professional services. But the crew still expose some issues on competency certificate, which will affect the normal operation of the vessel. Through analyzing the causes of these issues by studying collected data and relevant conventions, this paper proposes to change the level of the navigation area and amend the standard of deck department seafarers’ competency level in order to solve the competency issues. 1.Introduction. Offshore support vessel (OSV) is an important tool in the exploration of offshore oil, which can provide a variety of support such as anchor handling, towing, positioning, material supply, guardian, fire control, personnel carrying, remotely operated vehicles (ROV) support and testing [1]. With the enhancement of the offshore oil resources exploitation ability, the exploitation activities are going into the deep water area and the ultra-deep water area, and the type of OSV is also being subdivided gradually [2]. All of these not only put forward new requirements on the design and the construction of OSV, but also higher requirements on the crews’ competency ability to operate the ship and its ancillary equipment. However the OSV crew in China still have some competency certificate issues which are urgent to be solved. 2. The Competency Certificate Issues of OSV Crew The competency certificate is an important proof of competency level of the crew, indicating that the crew has sufficient ability to operate the ship and its equipment. It can be divided into coastal waters and unrestricted waters according to the level of the navigation area, also can be divided into different classes according to the level of the gross tonnage and the main propulsion power of the service vessel. TABLE 1. The level of competency certificate. The level of the navigation area The level of the service vessel Unrestricted navigation area First class Second class Coastal navigation area First class Second class Third class 2.1 The level of navigation area dropped The OSV in China is mainly involved in the coastal waters. So even though the design and construction of the OSV meet the requirements of CCS about the world-wide ship, China’s OSV often chooses the coastal navigation area when applied the classification of ship, so as the "Certificate of Nationality of Ship" and "Minimum Safe Manning Certificate". Only when the OSV International Conference on Humanities Science, Management and Education Technology (HSMET 2017) Copyright © 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 96