Simultaneous Tasks as a Contributory Factor to Maritime Accidents

emerging Updated: 2026-05-31
maritime-safety human-element simultaneous-tasks multitasking work-as-imagined-work-as-done task-deviation seafaring activity-theory safety-culture crewing

Simultaneous Tasks as a Contributory Factor to Maritime Accidents

Status: emerging
Last updated: 2026-05-31
Sources: 1Publishedsimultaneoustasksasacontributoryfactortomaritimeaccidentsasocio Culturalapproach.Pdf
Tags: [maritime-safety, human-element, simultaneous-tasks, multitasking, work-as-imagined-work-as-done, task-deviation, seafaring, activity-theory, safety-culture, crewing]

Summary

Seafarers routinely perform several tasks at once to manage their workload, and this multitasking contributes to collisions, groundings, and other casualties at sea. Rajapakse et al. (2022) frame the problem as a gap between work as imagined by shipping companies and work as done by crews, and trace simultaneous tasking to three socio-cultural drivers: administrative burden, a poor speak-up culture, and insufficient crewing. They argue the causes are structural rather than individual, so single-measure fixes such as tighter procedures have not worked.

Body

Context

Rajapakse et al. (2022) examine why seafarers engage in simultaneous tasks and how that multitasking contributes to maritime accidents. The study is exploratory and qualitative, built on sixty-one semi-structured interviews with experienced seafarers previously involved in accidents, and it reads shipping through Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to locate the causes in the work system rather than in individual error. Within this knowledge base the article anchors the human-element strand of maritime safety — the socio-cultural and organisational roots of casualties rather than equipment failure — and, as the first article here, it sets the reference point for later work on workload, crewing levels, and safety culture.

Key Points

Accident investigations consistently name the human element as the leading contributory factor, yet multitasking specifically has not been examined adequately. The industry's safety record has not improved in step with regulation, which the study attributes partly to instruments such as the ISM Code and STCW treating shipping as a linear sequence of single tasks when most onboard work is dynamic and concurrent (PDF pp. 2–3, orig. pp. 1–2).

The central lens is the distinction between work as imagined and work as done. Onshore designers cannot anticipate every contingency, so the procedures and checklists they produce can provoke departures from the prescribed sequence. Such a departure is termed task deviation, and engaging in simultaneous tasks is a frequent cause of it; deviation turns into a mishap only when it is not corrected before it is too late. Blame typically falls on seafarers at the "sharp end," while responsibility often lies with those at the "blunt end" who design the work (PDF pp. 3–4, orig. pp. 2–3).

CHAT supplies the analytical method. Shipping is treated as an activity system — subject, tools, object, rules, community, division of labour — whose internal contradictions drive change. The seafarers' object is safe and efficient operation, but completing jobs on time with the resources available forces concurrent tasking, generating a structural contradiction because that multitasking can cause accidents (PDF pp. 3–4, orig. pp. 2–3).

Three drivers emerged from the interviews. Administrative burden is the first: paperwork is treated as a task in its own right, performed alongside operational work, and includes risk assessments, permits, checklists, cargo records, and logbook entries; complaints included procedures written by non-mariners, inflexible checklists, falsified records, paperwork done only to pass audits, and officers too occupied with documentation to supervise (PDF pp. 6–8, orig. pp. 5–7). The second is a lack of speak-up culture: fear of saying no to senior officers, fear of blame, ignored warnings, and cross-cultural deference leave crews managing overwhelming situations without asking for help and bystanders unwilling to intervene (PDF pp. 8–9, orig. pp. 7–8). The third is insufficient crewing: statutory minimum safe-crewing levels can be too low to complete work without multitasking, crew sizes have fallen on the justification of automation, and workload spikes at home ports where companies concentrate resupply to cut costs (PDF pp. 9–10, orig. pp. 8–9).

Conclusion

Rajapakse et al. (2022) conclude that simultaneous tasking reflects socio-cultural features of contemporary shipping rather than individual failings, with parallels in aviation and healthcare. Because the industry's earlier response of tighter procedures, more technology, and additional training achieved little, they call for complex, multi-pronged interventions: involving seafarers in designing procedures so that work as imagined aligns with work as done, resourcing those procedures adequately, amending STCW to train crews on the severity of task deviation and the principle of "one job at a time," rewarding speaking up, and re-assessing safe-crewing levels with crew feedback and stronger flag-state review.

  • Situation Awareness Maritime Accidents — shares author Grech and the human-element thesis; quantifies loss of situation awareness as a cause of casualties, a cognitive counterpart to the socio-cultural drivers here

References

Rajapakse, A., Emad, G.R., Lützhöft, M. and Grech, M. (2022) 'Simultaneous tasks as a contributory factor to maritime accidents: A socio-cultural approach', The Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics. doi: 10.1016/j.ajsl.2022.09.001. rajapakse2022simultaneous

Open Questions

  • The study is qualitative and exploratory with a single (largely male) interview cohort. How far do its three drivers generalise across fleets, trades, and flag states? The authors invoke transferability but do not quantify prevalence.
  • The recommendation to amend STCW to mandate "one job at a time" training sits in tension with the finding that multitasking is structurally unavoidable under current crewing certificates. Can training change behaviour without first changing crewing and workload?
  • The claim that reduced crewing, not automation, drives modern accidents draws partly on a single master's account. What independent evidence supports it?
  • How does the work-as-imagined / work-as-done framing connect to resilience-engineering and Safety-II concepts (Hollnagel) that the study cites but does not develop? A dedicated article could anchor this.