PSS Industry Incident Statistics Report
2021 proved challenging for the maritime industry, as the world slowly emerged from the pandemic and into a cost-of-living crisis. It was equally challenging for PSS as former CEO Richard Steele departed followed in quick succession by stalwarts Rean Da Costa and Marcio Goncalves. However, the appointment of Richard’s successor Debbie Cavaldoro, together with team members Kev Haag and Angela Ward, has reenergised PSS and we continue to enable the sharing of data to improve standards across the ports sector. To that end, we are pleased to announce the release of the Accident Statistics Report 2021.
Previous statistics reports were prepared for PSS by third-party contractor Customised Mapping (CM) from data collated separately to the already collected quarterly by PSS. However, for 2021, the data was collected from ports contributing to the ongoing PSS benchmarking dashboard, with supplemental information from CM. Therefore, terminology, categories, and data collection methods all differ slightly from previous years, meaning direct comparison to 2020 should be treated with caution. The data coverage spans eighteen contributing ports with an average of just over 12,000 direct employees and statistics are compiled on a ‘per 100 average employees’ basis.
The results indicate that Lost Time Incidents (LTI), High Potential Incidents (HiPo), and RIDDOR reportable incidents have all decreased in the last twelve months, with three organisations declaring zero LTIs in 2021. However, the top incident location for LTIs continues to be the quayside alongside a vessel, with approximately 20% of LTI port incidents occurring in this vicinity. This data suggests that ports are seeing some success with the application of health and safety procedures, but it should be noted that COVID measures still in place in 2021 reduced the number of personnel on site.
Overall, the picture is positive however there is still scope for PSS to lead in creating a standard framework of data collection, which would allow for direct benchmarking between ports. We recommend that members agree to a common data collection structure, and potentially adapt their existing systems and processes to accommodate this.
The full Port Industry Accident Statistics Report for 2021 is available for download below.