So, I'm the Captain of a spaceship.
Merchant vessel, hauling databytes through the aether. Occasionally we run from pirates and maybe do some mildly illegal work, but mostly I try to stay legit. Life is easier, so long as we stay in the black.
Got a whole slew of crew to keep a ship like this running, and I'm wondering how best to organize. See, I'm thinking about what the Americans learned back in the 21st in their Pac Fleet: shift work is real bad. Those 18 hour days, or that watch-on-watch-off shit? Runis you. That's how you run into other ships.
I'm thinking there's two axes that need to be managed: Type of work, and when you do your work. Everybody needs someone to look up to on both of those.
That is, if you're a hacker grunt on the midnight shift you need someone you can call at midnight if there's a problem. Same goes if you're in water reclamation. That should be someone on your own time-table, who goes and gets the right person to solve the problem.
Which means: three watches, each with a watch officer. Maybe:
0000 - 0800
0800 - 1600
1600 - 0000
Each of those watches will have enough people to do maintenance and keep the ship running, plus an Officer of the Watch. If there's a problem, call the watch officer. Then figure out together who to reach out to next, but the only person any crew needs to call up is their watch officer.
Plus, I figure it's best for the expert staff not to have watches per say, so we can be fresh. Maybe we -- that's me (Cap), Chief Mechanic, Main Reclamator, Steward, The Hacker, and an Aetherist, of course. We all take a shift like: 1200 - 2000.
The ole' noon to 8 PM shift. Our work is mostly prioritizing and doing backlog pruning, so the crew can focus on doing work. Whenever possible, I'll schedule the big events to happen during that shift.
I figure each of them can still be pretty technical -- less for me. I'll miss it -- oh? Yeah, I was a hacker. It's kind of how I got the ship.
I'm a little worried about the midnight to 8 am shift. It'll be important to schedule them some time with the experts, so the expertise rubs off. Maybe schedule a meal together, making sure the experts eat with everybody at least once a day.
Speaking of meals, maybe:
0600, 1200, 1800, 0000
There's always food ready, like any civilized place. We'll need a variety, but I don't want to serve anything still alive. I know that may make it hard to hire any skagons, but that's something I can live with. Got to have food available, if I want folks to stay in flow.
Not having food 24/7 would be like not having coffee -- downright inhumane. Or at least, foolish.
This isn't quite like any ship I've run, but I figure it'll work. If it does, we can keep scooping up data and selling it.
Our trip'll be about a week from port to port -- less if my aetherist can train some good helpers. Call it 7 days on, then the adventure begins -- maybe as much as another week to get as much from the local news feeds, entertainment stations -- yes, i mean porno -- and the local games. Load up those, and take them to where they are worth more. A good two weeks sprint, more or less.
It's when we're gathering up that data cargo that the Hacker's do their best work, so it'll be important not to work them too hard during travel. Huh, occurs to me Hacker and Aetherist run on opposite time tables -- I never thought about it that way. For the Aetherist, it's the travel that's the job, and for the hacker it's the time in port.
So, whatcha think? Is this a reasonable setup? Or, am I going to be floating home?
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Speaking as a former sailor ( USCGC Legare 1998-2001) Its not the shift work thats the problem, its the training supervision and reliance on technology. Add in 8 hours of dayworking where your just doing busy work and thats a recipe for trouble. . The Navy is running into stuff because their 6 lookouts aren't trained well enough, their radar operators aren't doing their job and their deck officers aren't experienced.
ReplyDeleteall of the accidents in the last few years have been situations where the lookout didn't collaborate the other ships movements visually with radar from combat. additionally The deck officer didn't communicate with the other vessel or act cautiously when they couldn't communicate with the other vessel.
I can tell you right now that I feel you watch schedule will lead to a bad accident. The watch is too long. How long can you focus on a tough task. Stare at a screen, do math (to check your course and speed) check gauges, run diagnostics... if you do that longer than 4 hours it gets really tough to focus. And on a watch you don't get breaks.
I would look at the merchant ship watch schedule in the wiki article here... or the traditional watch in 3 sections. (the one we did most often)
Meal times can be flexible with modern tech.
But thats how I'd run a ship.
en.wikipedia.org - Watch system - Wikipedia
admittedly I might just be biased too...but the wiki has some good ideas for watches in there...
ReplyDeleteJeffry Crews I've def read that. :-)
ReplyDeleteHaving no personal experience with watch standing, it's a weird thing to grapple with.
Besides, this is also all metaphor for how to manage a business -- how easy to make escalation, what sort of escalation to facilitate, how to compartmentalize work, blah blah blah.
But, thinking about offices qua offices is boring and i don't want to do it in public, even though that's the thing that governs my day to day.
Doing it is weird too. Struggling to keep a full crew qualified is really hard. We had lots of people transfer in and out... required tons of extra training. Some watches had double the people because of trainees. Sometimes you ended up doing port and starboard watches 6 on (hours) six off and back on again. The sweet spot was about 4 hours.
ReplyDeleteUnexpected absence doesn’t work.
Who takes over when you get sick for instance?
We also had folks who expressly day worked. Mostly Cooks and admin folks. (I’m pretty sure admin stands watch now though)
We were a warship so our watch sections included an engineering watch split into 2 responsibilities (A gang and main prop) a combat watch (for radar) , a bridge watch and a radio watch.
Bridge crew had ... 5 helm, lookout, quartermaster, officer of the deck and boatswains-mate of the watch. The bmow was our rover, could switch out for folks so they could use he head... which was on the bridge he got coffee and snacks and did rounds of the ship. Merchant ships often go down to 2 on bridge watch due to automation.
In empty space you could dispense with helm and lookout easy especially with good radar/ ladar and also because space has fewer environmental factors moving you around (waves, currents etc) nav is gonna be by computer too (though you need a calculator and a star chart to navigate if stuff goes down) really long stretches of empty you’d just need a proximity alarm with enough lede time 30 min? And someone up.
So bridge would be a 2 man OOD and BMOW who pilot the ship and who do signals and nav. But few day working responsibilities.
Engineering would have a larger watch and a big dayworking crew. A mechanic, a plumber or damage controlman, an “Oiler” an electrician and an IT. If you have a good all around mechanic you can condense the first 3 a bit.
And finally the Support staff, a cook, a steward and a medic or surgeon , scaled as needed. Medical can just be day work or on call. Cooks could be automated.
But You’d still probably need a purser or steward .
Why are you working with a 24-h clock? Does everyone's schedule need to line up? Would some jobs work better with 8h on/16h off shifts, some be better with 10h on/10h off shifts? Can some experts work 2h on, 8h on call, 2h on, 8h off to get more chance to visit more shifts?
ReplyDeleteThe 24 hour thing I guess is a good debate. But even then there are always dayworkers and specialists like medics usually do work on call.
ReplyDeleteBut there is a discipline concern for having too much flex shift for specialists. It can really piss people off. And in a confined environment having pissed off people is bad. If I’m working 8 hours every day and the IT is just on call then all of a sudden everyone just starts to hate the IT.