Technical Circular No: 002/2024
1. IACS Procedural Requirement (PR-33) “Owner's Hull Inspection and Maintenance Schemes” has been considered as an IACS focus area for the year 2024 towards satisfactory implementation by IACS societies on their classed ships. This procedural requirement requires “Owner's hull inspection and maintenance schemes are to be encouraged as a means for maintaining compliance with classification and statutory requirements between surveys.”
2. ISM Code Clause 10: Maintenance of The Ship and Equipment also requires for all ships under the code that “The Company should establish procedures to ensure that the ship is maintained in conformity with the provisions of the relevant rules and regulations and should ensure that inspections are held at appropriate intervals. These inspections should be integrated in the ship's operational maintenance routine.”
3. To ensure compliance to above requirements of IACS PR 33, ship owners and Managers are advised to be guided as below:
a. Hull inspections and maintenance schemes to be established in ships safety management system along with assigned responsibility & frequency and be implemented to ensure that the scheme is kept maintained and any resulting actions from inspections are being taken satisfactorily in compliance with the rules of the class society with whom the vessel is classed.
b. The assigned frequency be determined in a manner that these inspections are at least held between periods of ships class periodical surveys as scheduled by class society and mentioned in ships class survey status and intervals may be further increased as determined by the Company.
c. The relevant records of such inspections and maintenance are to be maintained by the responsible shipboard/company personnel for verification by surveyors. These records are to be consistent with the actual condition of the vessel and to be made available for verification during subsequent periodical surveys by class surveyors.
d. This requirement of owners Hull inspections and maintenance scheme for ESP vessels is already mandated through the ESP code and is being maintained for such vessels. However, for ensuing compliance with IACS PR-33, all ocean-going vessels even other than ESP vessels of more than 100 GT are also required to establish and maintain Hull inspection scheme for satisfactory maintenance of ship’s Hull and thus the strength of the vessels as required by class rules of the society with which the vessel is classed and is to maintain records of Hull inspections/maintenance undertaken between class surveys undertaken by ship/company personnel.
e. A sample format of Hull inspection/maintenance record is attached as Annexure for reference and implementation.
Enclosure:
Disclaimer:
This Technical Circular and the material contained in it is provided only for the purpose of supplying current information to the reader and not as an advice to be relied upon by any person. While we have taken utmost care to be as factual as possible, readers/ users are advised to verify the exact text and content of the Regulation from the original source/ issuing Authority.