Mustering is a life-saving procedure. Especially on offshore installations, speed of evacuation, the accuracy of real-time data and position awareness of your crew are the critical factors for a successful emergency evacuation.
Once the OIM orders to abandon an offshore installation, all personnel head toward the lifeboat area and call to board the designated rafts. However, mustering is challenging, as we learned from the most recent oil rig catastrophe, the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. The extreme circumstances of evacuating the platform – raging fire, intense heat, explosions, thundering noise, injured personnel, blocked pathways, and lifeboat sections – led to erroneous mustering and an unknown number of missing people. An automated mustering solution’s reliability and intuitive nature avoid such a scenario.
In short, an electronic mustering (e mustering) process delivers a faster, more efficient, and more reliable way to account for people than the previously used methods. It provides real-time understanding and better visibility of people’s locations, empowering individuals in charge to make better-informed decisions. Collective, real-time information is obtainable anywhere, resulting in better insight for everyone involved. This accuracy and accessibility to location and headcount could mean the difference in several lives when presented with a real crisis.
One of the crucial advantages of electronic mustering versus pen&paper methods is data: You know immediately if people are missing. Consequently, the commanding officer can concentrate her efforts on managing the crisis and automatically do the mustering.
The flexibility of relocating from one muster point to the next is one of the essential features of mustering solutions. The system automatically removes crew from previous muster locations and assigns them to a new site. Besides experiencing 20-25% faster muster time on average, the most significant benefit is the ability to see how many people have called in each location and their names. Additionally, mustering during drills and emergencies becomes nearly stress-free for a captain.
