Entry & progression
The handover is where machinery gets lost. Not in a failure — in the gap between the engineer who knew what was wrong and the engineer who did not. This lesson is the discipline of the change.
Do not accept a watch you cannot run
The relieving engineer does not take over if they are not in a fit state to do so. Not fatigued past usefulness, not impaired, not so unfamiliar with the plant that they could not act in an emergency. If that is the case you say so, and the off-going engineer stays until it is resolved. Accepting a watch you cannot run is not toughness. It is the beginning of the incident report.
Taking over the engine room watch
- Read the log and the standing orders. The chief's night orders and any restrictions on the plant.
- Get the verbal handover. What is running, what is on standby, what has changed this watch.
- Walk the plant with the off-going engineer — main engines, generators, boilers, steering gear, bilge and ballast.
- Check every alarm that is inhibited, overridden or cut out, and know exactly why.
- Check standby and stopped machinery, not just what is running. A generator that will not start is discovered at 0300, not before.
- Confirm the bridge's intentions — manoeuvring, anchoring, bunkering, restricted water.
- Confirm bilge, ballast, fuel and lube levels, and the state of any transfer in progress.
- Then, and only then, formally accept the watch and record it in the log.
What must be handed over verbally
- Any machinery running abnormally — a temperature drifting up, a vibration, a leak being watched.
- Any alarm that has been silenced, inhibited or overridden, and by whom.
- Work in progress: a purifier stripped, a filter changed out, an injector on the bench.
- The state of every transfer — fuel, lube, bilge, ballast — and where the valves stand.
- Anything the bridge has asked for, or is about to.
- Anything that is not right but not yet wrong. This is the item most often left unsaid.
WARNING — Inhibited alarms are the classic handover casualty An alarm that was cut out for a good reason at 1400 becomes an alarm that nobody knows is cut out at 0200. Every override must be logged, tagged at the panel, and spoken aloud at handover — three separate records, because two of them will fail. If you inherit an override you cannot explain, restore it or find out why before you accept the watch.
Handing over
Handing over well is the same discipline in reverse, and it is harder, because you are tired and you want to leave. The temptation is to say "all normal" and go. Resist it. Say the ugly parts first: what you did not finish, what you do not understand, what you would be watching if you were staying. An engineer who admits the thing they could not diagnose is doing the job. An engineer who covers it is handing a live problem to a colleague in the dark.
The log is the third leg. It is a legal record and it is read by surveyors, by the company and, if it ever comes to it, by an investigator. Write what happened, when, and what you did about it. Write it in ink, at the time, and do not tidy it later.