Inspections

Preparing for an inspection stopped being a memory test.

A tanker inspection is a serious commercial event: a charterer's decision rests on it. What changed in the last few years is that you can no longer prepare by learning the questions, because the questions are no longer the same for every ship.

What changed

The old model was a fixed questionnaire. Everybody had a copy, everybody drilled it, and preparation became an exercise in knowing which hundred or so things would be asked.

Modern vetting replaced that with a question library and a rule for drawing from it. The set your vessel faces is worked out for that inspection, from what she is and what she has recently done: her particulars, her type, her trade, her history, and whatever the industry is focusing on that quarter. Two sister ships can be asked materially different things on the same day.

Questions arrive in four kinds. Core questions are asked every time. Rotational questions are drawn from a pool, so the set moves between inspections. Conditional questions unlock because of something specific about the vessel — a cargo, a system fitted, a previous observation. Campaign questions follow the current area of focus and change through the year.

And each question is really three

Every question is assessed against three expectations at once: the people, the procedure, and the equipment. The valve can be in perfect order and the question can still go against you, because the procedure covering it is wrong, or because the rating who operates it cannot explain what he would do if it failed.

This is the part crews find hardest, and it is not unfair — it is the whole point. An inspection is trying to find out whether the ship is safe, not whether the paperwork is tidy.

One question, three expectations. The shape of the grid is different for every inspection, because the rows drawn are computed from the vessel — which is exactly why a fixed drill no longer prepares anybody.

What Navvex does about it

If the question set is computed, preparation has to be computed too. Four things have to happen, and only one of them is a walk round the deck.

  1. 01

    Work out what will be asked

    Build the likely set from the vessel's own particulars, her type and trade, her open items and the current focus. Not a guess — a derivation from the same inputs the inspector's set comes from.

  2. 02

    Walk it, aboard, offline

    Question by question, in the compartment the question is about, on a tablet that does not need a signal. Answered where the equipment is, not afterwards in the ship's office from memory.

  3. 03

    Attach the evidence

    A photograph, a reading, a certificate reference. An observation with nothing behind it is an opinion, and an opinion does not survive an inspector asking to see it.

  4. 04

    Rehearse the people

    The people expectation is answered by a person, out loud, under pressure. Crew practise the questions they will actually be asked, against the answers the assessment is looking for.

What the crew actually get

A list that is short enough to finish. The single most common failure in inspection preparation is a checklist so long that nobody completes it, so everybody completes the easy half and the ship arrives at the inspection with the difficult half untouched.

Navvex sorts by what is most likely to be asked and least likely to pass, so the first hour of work is spent on the items that will decide the outcome. What is left undone is visible and named rather than implied by a progress bar.

The point is not a tidier ship on inspection day. It is a ship that is the same on the day before and the week after.