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Professional diving is underwater diving where the divers are paid for their work. The procedures are often regulated by legislation and codes of practice as it is an inherently hazardous occupation and the diver works as a member of a team. Due to the dangerous nature of some professional diving operations, specialized equipment such as an on-site hyperbaric chamber and diver-to-surface communication system is often required by law, and the mode of diving for some applications may be regulated.
Commercial diving may be considered an application of professional diving where the diver engages in underwater work for industrial, construction, engineering, maintenance or other commercial purposes which are similar to work done out of the water, and where the diving is usually secondary to the work.
Lock out, tag out (LOTO) is a safety procedure used to ensure that dangerous equipment is properly shut off and not able to be started up again prior to the completion of maintenance or repair work. It requires that hazardous energy sources be "isolated and rendered inoperative" before work is started on the equipment in question. The isolated power sources are then locked and a tag is placed on the lock identifying the worker and reason the LOTO is placed on it. The worker then holds the key for the lock, ensuring that only they can remove the lock and start the equipment. This prevents accidental startup of equipment while it is in a hazardous state or while a worker is in direct contact with it.
Scientific diving is the use of underwater diving techniques by scientists to perform work underwater in the direct pursuit of scientific knowledge. The legal definition of scientific diving varies by jurisdiction. Scientific divers are normally qualified scientists first and divers second, who use diving equipment and techniques as their way to get to the location of their fieldwork. The direct observation and manipulation of marine habitats afforded to scuba-equipped scientists have transformed the marine sciences generally, and marine biology and marine chemistry in particular. Underwater archeology and geology are other examples of sciences pursued underwater. Some scientific diving is carried out by universities in support of undergraduate or postgraduate research programs, and government bodies such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the UK Environment Agency carry out scientific diving to recover samples of water, marine organisms and sea, lake or riverbed material to examine for signs of pollution.
In common with most of Europe and North America, Australian State Parliaments have responded to workplace illness, injury, and death by enacting legislation regulating workplace hazards. Until the 1970s and 80s, these standards were generally detailed and technical, focusing mainly on prescriptive measures such as specifying machinery guarding measures to be adopted to prevent injury to workers operating dangerous machinery. Beginning in 2008, state and federal regulations were harmonised, giving greater clarity and consistency in the legislation in effect in the various states.
A safety management system (SMS) is designed to manage safety risk in the workplace, occupational safety being defined as the reduction of risk to a level that is as low as is reasonably practicable (ALARP) to prevent people getting hurt.
A bailout bottle (BoB) or, more formally, bailout cylinder is a scuba cylinder carried by an underwater diver for use as an emergency supply of breathing gas in the event of a primary gas supply failure. A bailout cylinder may be carried by a scuba diver in addition to the primary scuba set, or by a surface supplied diver using either free-flow or demand systems. The bailout gas is not intended for use during the dive except in an emergency, and would be considered a fully redundant breathing gas supply if used correctly. The term may refer to just the cylinder, or the bailout set or emergency gas supply (EGS), which is the cylinder with the gas delivery system attached. The bailout set or bailout system is the combination of the emergency gas cylinder with the gas delivery system to the diver, which includes a diving regulator with either a demand valve, a bailout block, or a bailout valve (BOV).
The diving supervisor is the professional diving team member who is directly responsible for the diving operation's safety and the management of any incidents or accidents that may occur during the operation; the supervisor is required to be available at the control point of the diving operation for the diving operation's duration, and to manage the planned dive and any contingencies that may occur. Details of competence, requirements, qualifications, registration and formal appointment differ depending on jurisdiction and relevant codes of practice. Diving supervisors are used in commercial diving, military diving, public safety diving and scientific diving operations.
Diver training is the set of processes through which a person learns the necessary and desirable skills to safely dive underwater within the scope of the diver training standard relevant to the specific training programme. Most diver training follows procedures and schedules laid down in the associated training standard, in a formal training programme, and includes relevant foundational knowledge of the underlying theory, including some basic physics, physiology and environmental information, practical skills training in the selection and safe use of the associated equipment in the specified underwater environment, and assessment of the required skills and knowledge deemed necessary by the certification agency to allow the newly certified diver to dive within the specified range of conditions at an acceptable level of risk. Recognition of prior learning is allowed in some training standards.
A diving instructor is a person who trains and usually also assesses competence of underwater divers. This includes freedivers, recreational divers including the subcategory technical divers, and professional divers which includes military, commercial, public safety and scientific divers.
Dive planning is the process of planning an underwater diving operation. The purpose of dive planning is to increase the probability that a dive will be completed safely and the goals achieved. Some form of planning is done for most underwater dives, but the complexity and detail considered may vary enormously.
The European Diving Technology Committee eV. (EDTC) is an association registered in Kiel, Federal Republic of Germany for the purpose of making professional diving safer by creating international standards. Membership is open to all countries of the continent of Europe, with each country having one representative from the medical, industrial, government and trade union sectors. Some major diving industry associations are also involved. As of May 2016, 22 nations and 6 international non-governmental organisations were represented in the EDTC.
The Diving Medical Advisory Council (DMAC) is an independent organisation of diving medical specialists, mostly from across Northern Europe which exists to provide expert advice about medical and some safety aspects of commercial diving. The advice is published in the form of guidance documents, which are made available for download.
Diving safety is the aspect of underwater diving operations and activities concerned with the safety of the participants. The safety of underwater diving depends on four factors: the environment, the equipment, behaviour of the individual diver and performance of the dive team. The underwater environment can impose severe physical and psychological stress on a diver, and is mostly beyond the diver's control. Equipment is used to operate underwater for anything beyond very short periods, and the reliable function of some of the equipment is critical to even short-term survival. Other equipment allows the diver to operate in relative comfort and efficiency, or to remain healthy over the longer term. The performance of the individual diver depends on learned skills, many of which are not intuitive, and the performance of the team depends on competence, communication, attention and common goals.
The operations manual is the documentation by which an organisation provides guidance for members and employees to perform their functions correctly and reasonably efficiently. It documents the approved standard procedures for performing operations safely to produce goods and provide services. Compliance with the operations manual will generally be considered as activity approved by the persons legally responsible for the organisation.
Diving regulations are the stipulations of the delegated legislation regarding the practice of underwater diving. They apply within the national territory and territorial waters of a country. In most cases they apply to occupational diving, but in a few cases also to recreational diving. There are exemptions for recreational diving in some cases where it is recognised as a self-regulated industry. Offshore diving is generally outside the scope of diving regulations, and tends to be self-regulated through voluntary membership of industry organisations.
A diving team is a group of people who work together to conduct a diving operation. A characteristic of professional diving is the specification for minimum personnel for the diving support team. This typically specifies the minimum number of support team members and their appointed responsibilities in the team based on the circumstances and mode of diving, and the minimum qualifications for specified members of the diving support team. The minimum team requirements may be specified by regulation or code of practice. Some specific appointments within a professional dive team have defined competences and registration may be required.
Commercial divers as defined in the Diving Regulations to the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 are required to be registered with the Department of Employment and Labour. The Department of Employment and Labour has jurisdiction only within the national borders of South Africa, and therefore registered diving schools are required to operate within the borders of South Africa where the Diving Regulations apply. A registered diving school is required to comply with the Code of Practice for Commercial Diver Training, and the training standards published by the department for divers, supervisors and instructors respectively.
A diver training standard is a document issued by a certification, registration regulation or quality assurance agency, that describes the prerequisites for participation, the aim of the training programme, the specific minimum competences that a candidate must display to be assessed as competent, and the minimum required experience that must be recorded before the candidate can be registered or certified at a specific grade by the agency. A standard is a description of the quality required of a product, or a way of doing something that has usually been derived from the experience of experts in a specific field. The purpose is to provide a reliable method for people to share a reasonably consistent expectation regarding the scope and quality of the product or service. Training standards allow objective comparison between the training provided by various agencies and the competence indicated by certification or registration to the specific standard, though in most cases, training and competence may exceed the minimum requirement much of the time, and variation between newly certified divers can be considerable, partly due to differences in the training, and partly due to qualities of the candidate. Training standards may narrowly prescribe the training, or may concentrate on assessment of exit level competence, and allow recognition of prior learning based on various forms of evidence. To be useful, a training standard must be sufficiently specific to allow agreement on the requirements by most readers reasonably competent in the field, including the instructors, assessors, and learners who must use it, the employers of persons trained, the potential customers, and any quality assurance personnel who may need to enforce it. A training standard may be linked to a code of practice referring to how the training should be carried out.
References
- ↑ "Codes of Practice". SafeWork SA. Archived from the original on 19 March 2018. Retrieved 11 March 2018.
- ↑ CMAS Scientific Committee (1988). Code of Practice for Scientific Diving: Principles for the safe practice of scientific diving in different environments (PDF) (Technical report). UNESCO. No. 53.
- ↑ Staff (February 2014). "IMCA International Code of Practice for Offshore Diving" (PDF). IMCA D 014 Rev. 2. London: International Marine Contractor's Association. Retrieved 22 July 2016.[ permanent dead link ]
- ↑ "Codes of Practice". SafeWork NSW. Archived from the original on 12 March 2018. Retrieved 11 March 2018. Alt URL
