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broadcast The new way of doing things at Maritime New Zealand BY PAUL FANTHAM, INTELLIGENCE AND PLANNING MANAGER help us identify the most appropriate action. Those who choose to operate outside of the law pose a risk to themselves and others. Recently, we adopted an intelligenceled approach to individuals operating commercially without the appropriate maritime certificates. Intelligence briefings identifying the operators involved were provided to our frontline staff. This resulted in a number of vessels being detained; some losing the ability to operate altogether and ur core function remains the same – we will continue some choosing to comply. The serious offenders can expect to working to maximise compliance across all sectors to face prosecution action. make the maritime environment safe, secure, clean. One source of information is the notification of accidents, But our methods have undergone something of a sea change, incidents and serious-harm mishaps. as our chairman David Ledson indicated in his column last issue. Notifications are important to us because they help us Maritime New Zealand has a new structure, with the newly understand why harm occurs. Notifying MNZ is also a lawful formed Intelligence and Planning team sitting central to three requirement under the Maritime Transport Act and the Health Regional Compliance teams within the Compliance Group. and Safety in Employment Act – failure to The Intelligence and Planning team has do so is a criminal offence under both acts. three main roles: There is a common misconception that We are responsible for ensuring the MNZ will automatically "investigate" those professional standard of investigations who notify, with a view to prosecution, carried out by MNZ, and the team and that this discourages people from includes two specialist investigators. These notifying us. investigators work with maritime officers in In reality, we do not have unlimited the regional teams to build their investigation resources, but where we need to get a better capability, as well as leading investigations understanding of what has happened and into major or complex matters, such as the why, we will investigate no matter how we Rena or fraudulent maritime documents. learn of incidents. Secondly, we provide operational The relevant things we have learned intelligence briefs to support the compliance through investigations are then weighed group and the wider MNZ. This work is against our compliance operating model completed by our intelligence collator and to establish the most appropriate and fair intelligence analyst. response; considering the extent or risk And finally, but not quite yet, the team of harm, the conduct of those involved, will include a planner, who will plan and their attitude to compliance, as well as the coordinate the group's operational work, public interest. with a focus on the efficient use of our Paul Fantham, manager of the MNZ's new The action taken could include any or resources. This position anticipates the intelligence and planning team all of the tools we have available, from implementation of the Maritime Operator enforcement or revocation of a document, through to education Safety System and, in particular, will coordinate site inspections campaigns or policy change. and MOSS audits, as well as the usual work of port and flag state In the interests of encouraging compliance with the notification control inspections. requirements of the MTA and HSEA, and building a rich We are a new team and are still finding our feet, so some of the understanding of our maritime environment, we sometimes work we do – such as the planning and coordinating – is still in investigate those who fail to notify. In these cases we are inclined the development stages, but we know where we are heading and to take harder action. what we need to achieve to get there. As manager of the intelligence and planning team, I also chair That direction is guided by our new compliance operating what is called the Compliance Intervention Panel – a group of model and compliance strategy which provide a robust, fair and managers and technical experts from across MNZ, including our consistent framework for managing our compliance work and three regional compliance managers, who look at a broad variety the action taken – interventions – that arise from that work. of matters and make recommendations on the most appropriate You will hear phrases like "risk-based" and "intelligence-led" course of action. when MNZ people talk about our compliance operating model The CIP also considers intelligence on sector-wide issues that and the compliance interventions available to address issues. may require compliance intervention strategies. In plain terms, that means thinking about the information we In summary, the work of the intelligence and planning team, need, collecting that information from all available sources and in coordination with the CIP and supported by the wider MNZ, then processing and analysing it to identify emerging accident is all about finding the important problems and then trends, non-compliant behaviours or areas of potential harm. coordinating MNZ's capability to fix them. The results point to where we should focus our resources and A series of articles from Maritime New Zealand managers keeping readers informed about MNZ O 42 Professional Skipper September/October 2013 www.skipper.co.nz