Voyage planning is a key element of Bridge Resource Management (BRM) forming the foundation the bridge team will use to ensure the vessel’s safe transit along its intended route. A voyage plan (or passage plan) is a comprehensive, berth to berth guide, developed and used by a vessel’s bridge team to determine the most favorable route, to identify potential problems or hazards along the route, and to adopt bridge management practices to ensure the vessel’s safe passage. During passage planning, portions of a voyage that have the potential to pose the greatest risk should receive additional review, and the limits and conditions for undertaking those portions of the voyage set in advance.
As the phase in period for ECDIS use has been completed in July 2018, all applicable vessels should use ECDIS systems for planning, moving from traditional paper chart navigation. Port state control inspections also started to be detailed and extended on passage plan review, a factor which adds more difficulty and pressure to Bridge officers and Masters.Prior proceeding to planning, it has to be ensured that all initial actions and setup/start up information has been already incorporated to ECDIS. Special attention should be given when entering Vessel’s information for dimensions and the Consistent Common Reference Point which is defined as “a location on own ship, to which all horizontal measurements such as target range, bearing, relative course, relative speed, closest point of approach (CPA) or time to closest point of approach (TCPA) are referenced, typically the conning position of the bridge.”SOLAS chapter V (Annex 24 and Annex 25) provides the legislative guidance for Passage planning in shipping sector. In accordance with this guidance, there are four stages for planning a voyage:
- Appraising all relevant information
- Planning the intended voyage
- Executing the plan taking account of prevailing conditions
- Monitoring the vessel’s progress against the plan continuously
In this article we will refer only to the two first stages, Appraising information and Planning the intended voyage…(Read more) Source – https://safety4sea.com/cm-procedures-a-guide-to-safe-passage-planning/