P&I Clubs

The American Club has recently published a helpful new guide which focuses on Safety Management Systems. The aim is to assist both seafarers and shoreside personnel in understanding the basic principles of how to implement local and international safety management systems.

The booklet is the fourth in a series of coming guides produced by The American Club, which deal with matters of safety, protection of the marine environment and maritime security.

A safety management system – or SMS – is a proven and essential tool for achieving loss prevention success for both international shipping under the International Safety Management (ISM) Code and U.S. inland waterway operators and on non-compulsory vessels under the U.S. Code of Federal Regulation Subchapter M, towing vessels safety management system option for compliance.

The new guide is expected to assist operators with Continue reading “American Club publishes Safety Management Systems help guide”

Capt Yves Vandenborn, AFNI, Director of Loss Prevention at the Standard P&I Club, based in Singapore, writing in The Standard Club P&I’s bulletin addresses the International Safety Management Code on the occasion of its twentieth birthday. Twenty years and five amendments later after the Code came into effect in 1998, Mr Vandenborn examines its course so far and what, in his opinion, needs to be done in order to become more effective.

Background
The International Safety Management Code was born out of a series of serious shipping accidents in the 1980s, the worst of which was the roll-on roll-off ferry Herald of Free Enterprise which capsized at Zeebrugge in March 1987, killing 193 of its 539 passengers and crew. The cause of these accidents was a combination of human error on board and management failings on shore. The Herald of Free Enterprise public enquiry report concluded that ‘From top to bottom the body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness’.

What followed was a much needed change in maritime safety administration. In October 1989, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted new Guidelines on Management for the Safe Operation of Ships and for Pollution Prevention giving operators a ‘framework for the proper development, implementation and assessment of safety and pollution prevention management in accordance with good practice’. Following industry feedback, the guidelines became the ISM code in November 1993 and were incorporated in a new chapter IX of the IMO’s 1974 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) in May 1994, and became mandatory for companies operating certain types of ships from 1 July 1998. Continue reading “What next as the International Safety Management Code turns 20?”

Recent analysis of the Shipowners Club’s Condition Survey Programme has highlighted that approximately 25% of the vessels surveyed showed evidence of contaminated engine room bilges. As such, Shipowners Club seeks to raise awareness of the potential fire hazards associated with oily engine room bilges and the checks and steps that a ship’s crew and/or surveyor should undertake.

Whilst an oily bilge may not be the immediate source of a fire, any fire that arises in an engine room or machinery space has the potential to escalate and spread rapidly. The presence of oil accumulated in bilges or drip trays act as additional fuel to sustain burning and increase the likelihood of the fire reaching further areas.

With respect to these, the Club notes the following:

• Bilges, especially in the engine room, should be kept clean and free of oil at all times and chemical cleaning should be completed periodically.
• Operators should paint engine room bilges a Continue reading “Recent research findings highlight issues with dirty engine room bilges”