SafeMTS - Confidential Near Miss Reporting Mechanism for Maritime - Safety Committees’ Summer Meeting 2023

Kevin Kohlmann, Director of Safety at the Maritime Administration (MARAD), and Barry Ramesar, Director of Operations Integrity at Crowley, presented on the SafeMTS pilot program, which – as Mr. Kohlmann explained – is a voluntary, confidential near miss reporting program for the maritime industry that has been developed in partnership between MARAD and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to help the industry identify safety trends and drive continuous improvement. Mr. Kohlmann described the data protections put in place by BTS and the timeline for full implementation. Mr. Ramesar provided a vessel operator’s perspective on the importance of a robust, standardized near miss collection program with illustrations of leading versus lagging indicators and examples of risky situations. The ensuing discussion covered how companies using SafeMTS would input data, the way the data would be transformed and shared, and emphasized the importance of data security.