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Ship's bridges

The design of a ship's bridge is an ergonomic challenge of the highest level. The view outside is of course a big issue, but today, a visual overview inside is also a major factor, as a modern bridge is equipped with a large number of displays.

Recent projects:

Athena

Currently, the shipyard IHC Dredgers BV Kinderdijk is building the Athena (Van Oord) (130 m), a self-propelled cutter suction dredger. A cutter suction dredger is designed for dredging in hard soils. In this ship, the bridge is placed amidships. ErgoS was involved in the task analysis, contour design of the bridge, the bridge layout, cutter and shipping workplaces, and the ECR.

Vox Máxima

The Vox Máxima (205m) is the latest jumbo trailing suction hopper dredger for dredging and marine engineering company Van Oord. Here, the bridge is placed at the bow. During manoeuvring, view of the stern is very important. The ergonomic design of this bridge is closely aligned on this, resulting in a unique bridge contour. For the Vox Máxima, ErgoS created a bridge shape and layout design, as well as the detailed design of the shipping, dredging, and unloading workplaces.

HAM 318

For the HAM 318 (Van Oord), the world's largest hopper dredger (227m), ErgoS designed the bridge contour and accompanying work places. An article about this project can be found on the ‘Downloads’ page.

Best practices

Below, we give a small selection of practical tips that might be useful in the design of a ship's bridge.

• Design the bridge contour and shipping workplaces always simultaneously and in combination. It happens that much effort is put into designing a bridge contour with good outside views, while six months later it is obscured by displays during the design of the shipping workplace.
• It is a widespread misconception that office related health and safety regulations fully apply to nautical workplaces. Do not use office computer workstation standards. Most of these standards and guidelines are based on office situations and thus unsuitable for ship’s bridges.
• Provide freedom of movement. An ergonomically good workplace provides optimal accessibility to controls, without fixating the skipper into a certain position. The rule of thumb is 'the best posture is the next'. Therefore, the skipper can perform his duties in both a sitting and standing position and there is enough legroom to adopt various work postures.
• Compact design. Often, one must place more equipment on a console than there are easy accessible places available. The example below shows various configurations of a panel to switch a device on and off. The version on the right is 8 times smaller than the version on the left, but does exactly the same.