How might we better manage crew and vessel certification to improve operational efficiencies and thereby drive safety and welfare?
Key Focus Area:
Crew Safety, Training and Wellbeing
Each vessel and crew member requires multiple statutory certificates mandatory for the vessel’s operation and crew management. Currently most of these certificates are in physical form and hence have the potential to be lost or misplaced, leading to significant time, effort and cost to get a replacement, and potential downtime of the crew/vessel. It also adds to the paperwork handled by crew, in addition to their growing responsibilities onboard a vessel. This has implications for crew safety and welfare (mental overload on seafarers), as well as the turnaround time of vessels.
BP Maritime Services and The Shipowners’ Mutual Protection and Indemnity Association, are looking for a digital solution that can be readily adopted across the industry to ease the strain of managing physical statutory certificates, at least regionally if not globally.
Such a platform should be cyber-secure, ensuring maximum data protection and security to comply with PDPA / GDPR requirements. It should be easily utilised by crew and vessel, as well as regulatory bodies such as Flag States, Classification Societies, Certifying Authorities, Port Authorities, Immigrations, Customs, etc. It should also provide an efficient means for the verification of the authenticity of the certificates.
