Marine Engine Room Crew Spotlight

A Marine Engine Room Crew keeps the equipment humming on ships and marine vessels used in oil and gas exploration and operations. They operate and maintain engines, boilers, deck machinery and all other systems that keep a ship functioning.

What a typical day looks like:

Members of the Marine Engine Room Crew start their days making the rounds: monitoring and inspecting all machinery and equipment, reading meters, checking pressures, batteries and alarms. With finely attuned senses and skills, they make sure the ship maintains its power, remote control systems, generators, motors, pumps, turbines and more.

Unlike a land-based operation, the daily life of a Marine Engine Room Crew involves the complexities of life at sea. They need sea legs as they work closely with the rest of the crew and to be prepared to spend extended shifts – sometimes several weeks – onboard in confined quarters.

The kinds of problems Marine Engineering Room Crew solve at work:

Safety rests with the Marine Engine Room Crew. When an alarm sounds, it’s their job to assess its cause. In the event of a fire, a crew member might have to put on fire gear and help with closing vents, shutting off fans and ensuring people are moved to a safe location.

But Marine Engine Room Crews aren’t just called in when there’s an emergency. They’re proactive in safeguarding against equipment failures.

Skills used most on the job:

Working in a vessel’s engineering room is all about mechanical aptitude and a knack for electronics and computers. Because much of the equipment on board is operated by electronics and computerized systems, being electronically inclined is increasingly important. Just the same, crew members troubleshoot a lot of problems that still require traditional fix-it skills like changing bearings, checking fuel and water lines, and replacing parts. Marine Engine Room Crew members also need to be physically fit – vessels can have as many as seven decks, which makes climbing ladders an exhausting exercise.

Every ship needs a crew devoted to making sure that its necessary machinery and systems function properly. Because of the Marine Engine Room Crew everything is under control and everyone else on board can focus on their tasks at hand.