Evaluating maritime safety culture in contemporary port and ship operations

Assessment 2: Maritime Safety Culture, Law and Port Operations (Individual Coursework)

Module information

Module title: Maritime Safety, Law and Port Operations
Module code: MAR3007 (Level 6)
Weighting: 40% of overall module mark
Submission format: Individual written assessment (report-style essay)
Length: 2,000–2,500 words (excluding references, tables, and appendices)
Submission: Online via the VLE (Turnitin) as a single Word or PDF file

Assessment context and rationale

Contemporary shipping and port operations are shaped by a dense framework of international conventions, national legislation, and organisation-specific safety management systems. At the same time, industry investigations repeatedly link major incidents to weaknesses in safety culture, risk management practices, and operational decision-making in ports and at sea. This assessment requires you to integrate legal, operational, and human-factor perspectives in order to evaluate how safety culture is created, maintained, and sometimes undermined within a selected maritime context.

Assessment task

Task overview

Prepare a 2,000–2,500-word critical report that analyses how maritime safety culture is operationalised through law, regulation, and day-to-day port or shipboard practices in a specific case context.

Task steps

i. Select a focus case

Choose one of the following case contexts as the primary focus of your report:

• A UK or EU commercial seaport (for example container, Ro-Ro, or bulk terminal).

• An Australian multi-user port or terminal (for example bulk export, LNG, or mixed cargo).

• A specific trading fleet or vessel type (for example offshore supply, container, cruise, or tanker) operated under a national flag administration (for example UK, US, or Australian).

ii. Map the governing legal and regulatory framework

Identify the key international conventions and national regulations that apply to your case (for example SOLAS, MARPOL, the ISM Code, STCW, national safety or port legislation, and associated marine orders where relevant). Briefly explain how these instruments allocate safety responsibilities between the flag state, port state, company, master, and other actors.

iii. Analyse safety culture and risk management practices

Drawing on academic and industry sources, evaluate how safety culture is understood and implemented in your chosen context. You should:

• Discuss how the International Safety Management (ISM) Code and related company safety management systems are translated into operational procedures and behaviours.

• Examine the role of leadership, training, reporting culture, and learning from incidents in shaping safety outcomes.

• Consider how digital systems, data, and automation (for example VTS, AIS, electronic navigation, and port community systems) support or challenge safety and situational awareness where relevant.

iv. Evaluate port and/or vessel operational practices

Use at least one recent case example, near-miss, or incident (from accident investigation reports, port authority publications, or reputable media) to illustrate how the legal framework and safety culture interact in practice. Assess the adequacy of risk assessment, communication, and coordination between stakeholders such as pilots, tug operators, terminal operators, vessel crews, and regulators.

v. Develop evidence-based recommendations

Propose three to five realistic and prioritised recommendations to strengthen safety culture and risk management in your chosen context. Link each recommendation explicitly to your analysis and indicate which actors would be responsible for implementation (for example company management, port authority, regulator, or training providers).

Assessment requirements

• Word count: 2,000–2,500 words; include the final word count on the cover page.

• Use an appropriate academic structure with clear headings (for example Introduction, Legal and Regulatory Framework, Safety Culture Analysis, Operational Case Evaluation, Recommendations, Conclusion).

• Refer to at least eight credible sources, including a minimum of four peer-reviewed journal articles or scholarly book chapters published between 2018 and 2026.

• Incorporate relevant industry and regulatory documents such as IMO instruments, flag or port state guidance, and accident investigation reports where appropriate.

• Use Harvard referencing consistently for in-text citations and the reference list.

• Submit your work via the VLE by the published deadline; late submissions will follow standard university regulations.

• Ensure your work complies with academic integrity policies; all sources must be acknowledged and all generative tools (if used) must be declared in line with module guidance.

Marking rubric (40% of module)

Criterion 1: Understanding of legal and regulatory framework (20%)

• High Distinction / First (70–100%): Demonstrates precise, well-structured, and critical understanding of all relevant international and national instruments governing safety in the selected context, with accurate explanation of responsibilities and jurisdictional relationships.

• Credit / Upper Second (60–69%): Shows clear and accurate understanding of the main conventions and regulations with minor omissions; explanation of responsibilities is generally sound but may lack nuance.

• Pass / Third–Lower Second (40–59%): Identifies some key instruments but coverage is partial or descriptive; responsibilities and relationships between actors are outlined only in broad terms.

• Fail (<40%): Limited or inaccurate identification of relevant instruments; misunderstanding of responsibilities; substantial conceptual errors or reliance on non-authoritative sources.

Criterion 2: Analysis of safety culture and risk management (25%)

• High Distinction / First: Provides a critical, theory-informed discussion of safety culture and risk management that integrates human, organisational, and technical factors; effectively uses current literature and industry evidence.

• Credit / Upper Second: Offers a clear and mostly analytical discussion with appropriate use of contemporary sources; some links between theory and practice could be more fully developed.

• Pass: Discussion is mainly descriptive with limited engagement with theory or recent research.

• Fail: Minimal or inaccurate treatment of safety culture; lacks meaningful engagement with risk management concepts or current literature.

Criterion 3: Application to port or vessel operations (25%)

• High Distinction / First: Uses a well-chosen case example to provide detailed, coherent, and critical analysis of how law, safety culture, and operational practices interact; demonstrates strong insight into port or shipboard operations.

• Credit / Upper Second: Case example is appropriate and analysis is clear, though some aspects of interaction are only partially explored.

• Pass: Case example is described but analysis remains surface-level or fragmented.

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• Fail: Case is poorly chosen, inadequately described, or not analysed.

Criterion 4: Recommendations and critical reflection (20%)

• High Distinction / First: Generates realistic, prioritised, and well-argued recommendations grounded in the analysis and demonstrates strong reflection on feasibility, stakeholder roles, and barriers.

• Credit / Upper Second: Recommendations are sensible and mostly linked to the analysis, though prioritisation and reflection could be stronger.

• Pass: Recommendations are generic or weakly linked to the analysis.

• Fail: Recommendations are absent, unfeasible, or disconnected from the content.

Criterion 5: Structure, academic writing and referencing (10%)

• High Distinction / First: Argument is logically structured with clear signposting; writing is precise and professional; Harvard referencing is accurate and consistent.

• Credit / Upper Second: Structure is clear with minor lapses; writing is appropriate with occasional errors.

• Pass: Structure is broadly coherent but lacks clarity in places; referencing shows recurring errors.

• Fail: Disorganised structure; unclear writing; inaccurate or incomplete referencing.

Indicative learning outcomes assessed

• Demonstrate critical knowledge of international and national maritime safety and environmental legislation relevant to ship and port operations.

• Evaluate the concept of safety culture in maritime organisations and its relationship to incident causation and prevention.

• Apply risk management principles to analyse operational practices in port and shipping environments.

• Develop coherent, evidence-based recommendations to improve safety performance in maritime operations.

Effective maritime safety culture emerges when formal regulatory requirements and everyday operational practices reinforce each other rather than pulling in different directions. A UK container port that embeds ISM Code principles into local standard operating procedures, near-miss reporting, and joint training with pilots and tug crews is more likely to detect weak signals before they escalate into serious incidents. When management responds constructively to incident reports and invests in targeted training, seafarers and port workers are more willing to speak up about hazards, which in turn supports continuous improvement in both compliance and operational resilience.

References

1. Batalden, B.M. and Sydnes, A.K. (2018) Maritime safety and the ISM Code: A study of investigated casualties and incidents, Journal of Maritime Affairs, 17(3), pp. 325–352. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13437-018-0144-4

2. Bichou, K. (2018) Port operations, planning and logistics, in Talley, W.K. (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Maritime Economics. 2nd edn. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 485–509.

3. Bhattacharya, S. (2019) Safety culture in the shipping industry: Survey evidence, WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs, 18(1), pp. 23–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13437-018-0155-1

4. Hetherington, C., Flin, R. and Mearns, K. (2019) Human factors in maritime safety: A review of accidents and incidents, Safety Science, 111, pp. 176–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2018.07.015

5. Psaraftis, H.N. (2021) Environmental and Safety Challenges in Shipping. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69337-8