Welcome to what is planned to be a seven or eight-part series covering the attendance, inspection, and reporting that may be carried out by a marine consultant for the audit or survey of a vessel or other asset. The eight parts cover planning, equipment, travel, attendance, photography, reporting, and follow-up. Each part is not exhaustive but contains some good information that will allow a novice to get to grips with becoming an old hand, and maybe some gentle reminders and updated information to those old hands that have been around the oceans a few times.
As a freshly minted marine consultant, whether auditing, inspecting, surveying, or just being a nuisance to the crew on board, your work will be subject to requirements stipulated by the client, job-site management, and your company. This should be communicated to you and would cover the basics of minimum PPE, confidentiality, reporting requirements, contact details and so on.
What you probably have yet to be told are the ‘unwritten’ rules that either get passed on from those senior surveyors (you know the ones, salty sea-dogs with tales taller than the largest wave you’ve sailed) or are hard-learned lessons you will never forget and use as stories when it’s your turn as the salty sea-dog. The aim of this series is to share some basic, helpful, tips on what to, and not to, do.
Now, there are many flavors of marine consultant floating around (pun absolutely intended), and the title “Marine Consultant” is a catch-all for various roles that can be filled by an experienced mariner, engineer, naval architect, project engineer or any career-path sub-set with the prerequisite knowledge and experience within the maritime landscape.
Roles include Marine Warranty Surveyor (MWS), Dynamic Positioning (DP) consultant/practitioner (trials, FMEA, advice etc.), the SIRE, OVID or eCMID inspector, the mission-critical equipment inspector, incident investigator, Special Casualty Representative (SCR), the tow master, the salvage master, client representative, new build supervisor, the expert witness, sea fastening supervisor, cargo master, marine advisor and so on.
Listing advice for every role would take a lot of words; So, for this semi-regular series, we shall concentrate on the basics. The tips and advice included in this series come from our experience and lessons learned. Written and quality checked by a team of experienced marine consultants they are not all-encompassing, and as such should be one of many information sources to determine if you are doing your marine consultancy work the right way and safely. At the end of the day, if the client is happy, you should be doing something right.
There may be additional sub-sections or parts added as they are identified or requested, and the sections will include links as applicable to further reading or information. As we reach the end of the series we may make a PDF available for download.
We hope you enjoy this series and find some value in it. If you have comments and resources to share please comment, get in contact, and share so we can all continue to learn and improve our abilities. This is an open forum for those interested in the marine industry. Safe seas and happy reading…