TMSA navigational audit requirements vary by stage. Element 5 distinguishes between three audit types, each serving a different evidential purpose. Here is what each one demands. The distinction matters because oil majors and vetting bodies do not just ask whether…
Near miss reporting in shipping sits at the heart of any serious safety management system. ISM Section 9 requires it. TMSA KPI 5A scores it. SIRE 2.0 & RightShip RISQ inspectors ask about it. Every SMS I have reviewed —…
This silence is a symptom — one often associated with the normalisation of deviance in shipping. When I pull up a VDR audio file for a port approach on a well-run vessel with an experienced Master, this is often what…
The OCIMF Ship to Ship Transfer Guide for Petroleum, Chemicals and Liquefied Gases was published in a second edition in 2025. The first edition, the document that most existing STS Operations Plans reference — and in many cases were built…
When a ship manager or DPA decides to start a VDR audit programme, the first question is usually about findings — what will the data show, what will the auditor look for, which ships should go first. These are reasonable…
The BWMP new requirements that came into force on 1 February 2025 are not yet reflected in a significant number of plans currently on board. The PSC Concentrated Inspection Campaign that ran from September to November 2025 focused exclusively on…
The first article in this series set out what SOLAS Regulation II-1/3-13 requires across a fleet — which equipment is in scope, what the compliance deadlines are, and where the documentation gaps tend to appear. This article goes one level…
SMS language neutrality has become one of those phrases that appears in TMSA discussions and vetting preparation meetings as a marker of proactive safety culture. In most fleets I audit, however, the SMS was written by one cultural-linguistic group and…
When ship managers ask me what a SIRE 2.0 compliant SMS looks like, the honest answer is that the question itself reveals the problem. Most companies are still treating the SMS as a document to be inspected rather than a…
Every company I speak with eventually arrives at the same conclusion: the SMS has grown too large, too layered, and too difficult for the people who are supposed to use it. The decision to rationalise it is, by that point,…
Every time a ship is nominated for a cargo, a question is being asked in a room the ship manager is not in: what is the probability that this vessel creates a problem for us? Not a theoretical question. A…
When operators complete a rationalisation exercise and turn to the question of ISM SMS structure, the conversation almost always focuses on the same debate: which organisational model should the system follow? Department-based, TMSA-element, or digital with search? These are legitimate…