Black Sea MOU Launching a New Inspection Regime
The Black Sea MOU will launch a new inspection regime from 1 January 2016. The new regime is intended to harmonize the MOU’s risk based targeting and inspection system with the Paris MOU and Tokyo MOU.
At the 16th meeting of the Port State Control Committee in Batumi, Georgia, April 2015, the Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control in the Black Sea Region (BS MOU) decided to introduce a New Inspection Regime for selection of ships from 1st January 2016 to harmonize further its risk based targeting and inspection system with the leading memorandas, namely Paris MOU and Tokyo MOU, to the highest level.
The existing ship targeting system adjusted to accommodate additional generic parameters (e.g. Flag, RO, and Company performances), weighting points for each parameters, amendment of levels of the ship risk profile and determination of frequency of inspection of for each risk level, benefiting experience after four years of in depth comparative study of the leading PSC inspection regimes and considering discussion at IMO on the small flags.
Ship Risk Profile
Under the BS MOU New Inspection Regime, BS-IR (2016), existing targeting factor matrix replaced by the Ship Risk Profile. The Ship Risk Profile groups ships into High Risk Ship (HRS), Standard Risk Ship (SRS) and Low Risk Ship (LRS) which will be determined in real time utilizing PSC inspection and ship historical data over 36 months moving time window:– Type of ship– Age of the ship– Performance of the Flag of the ship (e.g. detention index, deficiency index levels) and IMO Audit– Performance of the recognized organizations (RO) (e.g. RO related detention index level and RO related detainable deficiency index levels) and RO of MOU– Performance of the company responsible for ISM Management (company detention index and deficiency index levels)– Number of detentions– Number of deficiencies per inspection (e.g. ship deficiency index level)
Inspection Categories
The BS-IR (2016) includes two categories of inspection, a periodic inspection and an additional inspection.Periodic inspections are determined by the time window. Additional inspections are triggered by overriding or unexpected factors depending on the severity of occurrence.
Time Window
The time window is set according to the ship risk profile as follows:– HRS: between 2-4 months after the last inspection in the BS MOU region;– SRS: between 5-8 months after the last inspection in the BS MOU region;– LRS: between 9-18 months after the last inspection in the BS MOU region;Since periodic inspection and additional Inspections count equally, the time span for the next periodic inspection re-starts after an additional inspection.
Selection scheme
Selection for inspection is based upon ship priorities. Ships assigned following priorities in the BSIS :
– Priority I : ships must be inspected, for which time window has been closed or there is an overriding factor.– Priority II : ships may be inspected, which is within time window or there is an unexpected factor.– No priority : Before the window opens for any risk profile and there are no overriding or unexpected factor is logged, the ship has no priority status and member States are not obliged to perform an inspection on such ship but if deemed appropriate may still choose to do so.
The Black Sea MOU will launch a new inspection regime from 1 January 2016. The new regime is intended to harmonize the MOU’s risk based targeting and inspection system with the Paris MOU and Tokyo MOU.
At the 16th meeting of the Port State Control Committee in Batumi, Georgia, April 2015, the Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control in the Black Sea Region (BS MOU) decided to introduce a New Inspection Regime for selection of ships from 1st January 2016 to harmonize further its risk based targeting and inspection system with the leading memorandas, namely Paris MOU and Tokyo MOU, to the highest level.
The existing ship targeting system adjusted to accommodate additional generic parameters (e.g. Flag, RO, and Company performances), weighting points for each parameters, amendment of levels of the ship risk profile and determination of frequency of inspection of for each risk level, benefiting experience after four years of in depth comparative study of the leading PSC inspection regimes and considering discussion at IMO on the small flags.
Ship Risk Profile
Under the BS MOU New Inspection Regime, BS-IR (2016), existing targeting factor matrix replaced by the Ship Risk Profile. The Ship Risk Profile groups ships into High Risk Ship (HRS), Standard Risk Ship (SRS) and Low Risk Ship (LRS) which will be determined in real time utilizing PSC inspection and ship historical data over 36 months moving time window:– Type of ship– Age of the ship– Performance of the Flag of the ship (e.g. detention index, deficiency index levels) and IMO Audit– Performance of the recognized organizations (RO) (e.g. RO related detention index level and RO related detainable deficiency index levels) and RO of MOU– Performance of the company responsible for ISM Management (company detention index and deficiency index levels)– Number of detentions– Number of deficiencies per inspection (e.g. ship deficiency index level)
Inspection Categories
The BS-IR (2016) includes two categories of inspection, a periodic inspection and an additional inspection.Periodic inspections are determined by the time window. Additional inspections are triggered by overriding or unexpected factors depending on the severity of occurrence.
Time Window
The time window is set according to the ship risk profile as follows:– HRS: between 2-4 months after the last inspection in the BS MOU region;– SRS: between 5-8 months after the last inspection in the BS MOU region;– LRS: between 9-18 months after the last inspection in the BS MOU region;Since periodic inspection and additional Inspections count equally, the time span for the next periodic inspection re-starts after an additional inspection.
Selection scheme
Selection for inspection is based upon ship priorities. Ships assigned following priorities in the BSIS :
– Priority I : ships must be inspected, for which time window has been closed or there is an overriding factor.– Priority II : ships may be inspected, which is within time window or there is an unexpected factor.– No priority : Before the window opens for any risk profile and there are no overriding or unexpected factor is logged, the ship has no priority status and member States are not obliged to perform an inspection on such ship but if deemed appropriate may still choose to do so.