Engine control room - Human factors

Paper in proceeding, 2009

A lot of effort has been put into analysis of the design and human factor issues on the ship bridge. The corresponding work and regulations are lacking with respect to the engine control room although proper engine control functionality is equally of great importance for ship operations. To address this lack of research, our team has conducted an extensive on board survey of seven ships within the Swedish merchant marine fleet. One of the purposes of this project was to raise the engine control issues and to increase the knowledge of maritime engineering and human factors issues in the engine control room. The result indicates that the design of the ECR has not developed towards meeting the new demands which this utilization of new technology implies. Therefore future set of rules and regulations regarding the engine control room design need to be developed to meet the changes in work performance.