Maritime Confined and Enclosed Space Awareness

What your employer must give you

This course teaches how maritime confined and enclosed spaces are recognised, tested, ventilated and coordinated, and when to stop. The vessels, the cargo, the people and the equipment belong to your employer. Make sure you can get each one before you go near a space:

• Which standard governs the operation you are assigned to. Part 1917 marine terminals, Part 1918 longshoring, Part 1915 shipyard employment, or something else.
• The inventory of spaces at your site and on the vessels you work: holds, deep tanks, intermediate and refrigerated compartments, intermodal and portable tanks, trailers, railcars, storage rooms and vault-like terminal structures.
• The cargo and prior cargo, and whether it has been fumigated or chemically treated, including the carrier’s written fumigation notification and, for treated tobacco, the written aeration assurance.
• Who your employer has designated as the competent person to test atmospheres, and the instrument, calibration, bump-check, sampling and alarm procedures they use.
• The representative sampling locations and retest frequency for the space you are entering or working near.
• Your employer’s §1918.94 carbon monoxide procedure, the monitoring timing, the 50 ppm eight-hour area level, the applicable ceiling, the Ro-Ro distinction and the removal decision.
• The ventilation equipment and its intake placement, and who confirms distribution is actually effective in the space.
• The condition and inspection of fixed and portable ladders, access openings, guards, lighting and emergency egress on your route.
• The respiratory protection programme, you are not cleared to use a respirator without medical evaluation, fit testing and training under it.
• The hot-work, energy-isolation, cargo-movement and machinery controls that apply before welding, cutting, heating or cleaning near your space.
• The communication system, tested in the actual steel structure and in the PPE you will be wearing, and the shift and contractor handoff procedure.
• The alarm signals, exit routes, accountability points and how emergency responders are actually activated at your site, and the vessel, cargo, treatment, test and headcount information they will need.

If you cannot get these, stop and ask before you go near the space. Nothing in this course authorises you to enter, to test an atmosphere, to wear a respirator, to do hot work, to operate equipment or to attempt a rescue. Module 7 is blunt about the one thing that turns one casualty into several: if someone is down inside a space, raise the alarm and do not go in after them.