Assessing the Effectiveness of Bridge Resource Management Training

Bridge resource management (BRM) is the maritime equivalent of crew resource management (CRM), and has been used in the civilian maritime industry for over a decade. An evaluation of the effectiveness of the U. S. Navy's BRM training was carried out by assessing the attitudes toward, and knowledge of, the human factors that contribute to accidents in high-risk organizations. A comparison was made between surface warfare officers (SWOs) who had and had not attended BRM training. The responses of the SWOs were also compared to CRM-trained U. S. Naval aviators. It was found that BRM training did not have a significant effect on the attitudes and knowledge of SWOs. Further, naval aviators were significantly more knowledgeable, and generally held attitudes toward the human factors that are causal to accidents in high-risk organizations than did SWOs. It was concluded that the Navy's BRM training is not having the impact on knowledge and attitudes that is typical of the CRM training reported in the literature. It is proposed that the main reason for the lack of effectiveness of the BRM program is that the content of the training was not based on a needs assessment carried out within the surface warfare community.