Collaborating with HiLo Maritime Risk Management

V.Group strive to promote an organisational culture within which all team members have an absolute regard for the safety and wellbeing of our teams at sea. We set and maintain standards that help to differentiate V.Group and, in doing so, we are moving towards a proactive and dynamic culture in which safety is embedded within everything we do.

Safety is a journey.  We are constantly looking to improve our efforts regarding the wellbeing and safety of our people and ultimately always aim towards Goal Zero – by achieving accident-free operations with all colleagues returning home safely after work.  On this journey, we’ve partnered with HiLo Maritime Risk Management to further understand our operational risks and ensure mitigation to prevent harm to people, property and the environment.

HiLo is an industry initiative to model and provide a level of risk focus to high impact and low frequency incidents in the fleet, based upon the reporting of leading events and near misses.  Collaborating with shipping companies, HiLo has unprecedented access to internal data, and uses big data predictive analytics to improve the safety of mariners, identifying risk areas that may be missed by other systems.

Rather than focusing solely on lagging indicators such as incident databases, HiLo looks ahead collects leading event data sets, including safety reporting, audit findings and inspection data.  These data sets contain vital leading indicators for potentially catastrophic events.

How it all started

V.Group was one of the founding 10 companies and has been involved with HiLo MRM since the initial project phase starting with the first Joint Industry Project (JIP) signed in November 2016.

Throughout 2017 the initial 10 companies submitted data to the JIP with a view of building and proving the concept of a maritime predictive model for operational safety. The first quarterly report was released to the JIP participants in 2017, covering 2016 Q4 data and HiLo has been active since, being set-up as an independent company in 2018

Development of risk models for all segments

Throughout 2017 the participants agreed to continue the JIP for a further year and open Phase 2 to a further 10 companies. Since then, HiLo has become an independent, Ltd. by guarantee, company and has developed parallel risk models covering Tankers, Bulk Carriers, Container vessels and Offshore vessels, with work ongoing on Cruise Liners and Inland Barge models, amongst other risk modelling POC’s.

Results analysed from developed risk models showed some key insights into the industry regarding accuracy of the HiLo risk model predictions from the data received and highlighted where immediate improvements could be made. To put this into context, from January 2018 to September 2021, the model has successfully reported 17 potentially avoided fatalities and 125 potentially avoided injuries.  This has been achieved through analysis of 71565 leading event reports from the V.Group fleet.

Mike Bradshaw, V.Group’s Global Head of Health, Safety, Security, Environment and Quality (HSSEQ), commented:

“At V.Group, we are dedicated to setting the standards for industry-leading performance in health and safety. In doing so, we actively partner with technical experts who share our values and promote best practices in safety management. The expectation from our Group, and our customers, is that responsible companies not only maintain best practices, but are also committed to having programs in place which drive continuous improvement.”

For more information, visit https://hilomrm.com/