IACS to look at complex onboard systems

Among the expected focus topics, such as ensuring a smooth implementation of the CSR (common structural rules), and extended unified requirements for post-Panamax container ships, Mr Donache-Gay hopes that IACS will be able to help move forward enhanced safety for passenger ships, which includes domestic ferries as well as large cruise ships, and ensuring that the complex onboard software systems, on which an increasing number of ship types are depending, can all be integrated, operated and kept up to date in a consistent and inherently safe manner.

Mr Donache-Gay looks to the offshore sector to pave the way in this respect; the class societies which specialise in this market have already addressed the safety of DP systems, for example, and this expertise should be applied to other sectors.

Other safety-related topics in which Mr Donache-Gay sees IACS as having an increasing role is in standardised LNG safety guidelines, developing common bunkering procedures for gas as well as facilitating the development of clean fuel. He also expects IACS to be working closely with the industry in resolving the potential conflict between fuel efficiency and safety in the EEDI, ensuring that minumim requirements for speed, power or manoeuvrability can be maintained.

Much of the current focus at IACS is driven by response to particular casualties, such as the MOL Comfort and Costa Concordia, but Mr Donace-Gay wants to widen this scope to include domestic ferries, which in general have a very poor safety record, most recently the tragedy in Korea. Many of these ships come outside the scope of SOLAS and are classed by non-IACS societies, but he believes that the major class societies can do a lot to improve the situation.

Mr Donache-Gay, on his third day in office, was speaking to members of the maritime press in London.