Mike Compton
Mike Compton is the proproeter of Circlechief AP. He has written this column since 1976.
Email: mike@portsafety.demon.co.uk
Health & Safety
New safeguards for dockers Analysis
As an IMO correspondence group works to recommend changes to the organisation's Resolution on the subject of enclosed spaces on board ship, it is perhaps worth recapping what this subject means to cargo handlers and other shoreside employees concerned with cargo.Read More | 01 May 2010
WhoÕs responsible for checking box tops? Analysis
Here is a very practical question for those involved in container terminal operations: Who in a terminal has the task of checking the tops of containers coming to the terminal, whether by land or by sea and, if there is such an arrangement, what are they checking for?Read More | 01 May 2010
When the wind blows Analysis
We know about the power of the sea but the power of the wind is sometimes hard to believe. When Typhoon Maemi hit Busan in 2003, the port found with that it was possible for the wind to lift container cranes out of their storm pin sockets, albeit by the highest wind speed ever experienced in that part of the world. There is now news of a container crane being blown over backwards in the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific. I recall that in 1976 in the Dundalk Terminal in Baltimore, a container crane with its boom up was hit face on by a local Chesapeake Bay squall and collapsed on itself. But this new incident was with the boom down Ð or at least that is what a recently seen photograph shows.Read More | 01 May 2010
Some advice on crane inspections Analysis
I wonder how many sharp eyes there were reading the last edition of Cargo Systems. In my article Learning from past mistakes, reference was made to ILO Convention 152 and its core requirement that lifting appliances should be thoroughly examined at least once in every 12 months. For ships' cranes this is supplemented by a test every five years and both these provisions should be reflected in national port state labour laws as well as flag state laws. Separately, in the same edition there was a most thoughtful article To spend or mend that examined the case for refurbishment of lifting appliances rather than replacement. In it, a visual inspection of critical areas of the crane was recommended should be undertaken once every six months, with additional NDT testing once every two years and, in addition, a total comprehensive structural inspection including internal inspection every five years.Read More | 01 May 2010
