Behavioral Competency, Introduction

Many incidents still occur, and the major factor is the human element. The human competencies compromises both technical skills and soft skills.

The concept of ‘Behavioral Competence’, and of assessing it separately, is relatively new to the industry. Many of those onboard do not yet have experience of assessing ‘Behavioral competence’ separately. Since it is a recommendation from OCIMF and Intertanko, many companies will now be expected to be assessing Behavioral Competences.

The aim of this module is to describe what Behavioral Competence is, why it was introduced, and how best to assess it. This will assist compliance with the general provisions of STCW Section A-I/6, Training and Assessment, which states that “Any person conducting in-service assessment of competence of a seafarer…shall have received appropriate guidance in assessment methods and practice”.

Learning objectives:

• Identify what is meant by ‘behavioral competence’
• Identify why Behavioral Competence was introduced as an addition to existing technical competences
• Recognize a typical grading system for behavioral competence, based on recommendations from the OCIMF/Intertanko ‘BCAV’ system and IMO model course 1.30, 2017
• Recognize why Behavioral competence may be graded, whereas technical competences are often assessed as simply ‘competent’ or ‘not yet competent’