Internet class verification

Bureau Veritas has launched an extension to its Veristar system allowing clients to track classification of their newbuilding projects in real time using the Internet. Brittany Ferries is using a pilot version of the system on Mont St Michel, now being built at van der Giessen- de Noord shipyard in the Netherlands. Bureau Veritas hopes to roll out availability of the system to all its clients by the middle of next year. “The idea is that every actor [in a newbuilding project] is a part of the process from the beginning,” explains Teymour Yaghami of the equipment engineering department at Bureau Veritas. The current pilot scheme focuses on equipment, but the plan is to integrate stuctural classification elements into the service. In this way clients can build up a complete picture of class intervention and verification during a newbuilding. They can also maintain verification systems electronically for future reference. The success of the system partially depends on the willingness of the shipyard to release information. Van der Giessen- de Noord, for example, has agreed to release all purchase orders ? minus the price ? to Bureau Veritas. Further add-ons will require the shipyard to transfer CAD files. For those worried that the on-line system will create additional work, Yaghami has words of comfort: “We can assure everyone that there is no additional work.”