Safety Management Systems (SMS) are implemented to assist a Company and their emplyees to safely operate vessels, manage and direct the Masters & crews and to help prevent pollution. 

The requirement for a company to implement an SMS may be regulatory, to comply with the International Safety Management Code (ISM) or Domestic Safety Management, where compliance is verified by MCA, Flag or Class. Other vessels such as Code vessels, large yachts and training centres may be required under a Code requirement or just because simple plain good practice. 

In fact even when a documented safety management system is not identified by a code requirement, the key safety elements are required by all commercial vessels under The Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels (Health and Safety at Work) Regulations 1997.

It’s essential that the system is suitable, sufficient and reflects your operation. It should comply to the relevant regulations for the company, its employees, and vessels. The key to all systems is to ensure that it is written in a way so that crews implement the system and that staff can easily follow the procedures put in place.

We produce safety management systems that reflect your operation so they can be more straightforward to implement. Our systems are built around the operations of your company and vessel(s). We can also work with your masters, crews and shoreside staff to ensure the SMS is understood, fit for purpose and can develop and grow as the company’s aims change and develop over time.

The Safety Management System (SMS) is a live document. It will change as procedures and systems within the company change. SeaComply either supply your system and let you get on with implementation or work with your organisation to help maintain and develop the SMS with regular SMS audits, organising and collating Masters reviews, onboard fleet-wide audits, advice and consultancy on a retainer service.

We can also design Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Emergency Operating Procedures (EOPs) to suit the vessel and its equipment, these can be included in the SMS along with reporting systems and maintenance schedules.

All systems can be produced and supplied in both paper and digital formats.

Risk assessments are the essential starting point to keeping the Company, seafarers, operations and vessels safe. They are also a requirement under the law. Our team can work with you and your workforce so that Risk assessments and controls are put in place to ensure suitable and sufficient assessment of risks and establish control measures and procedures where necessary. It is important we work with you rather than just deliver the completed risk assessments, as it is vital for the workers, crew, and staff to be involved in the process. 

We match any control measure and operating system to industry best practices or legal requirements where we can.

Checklists are an essential and handy way to ensure certain tasks are carried out to the correct level and at the right intervals. We can provide chacklists in either paper or electronic versions. 

The checklists can be supplied as a standard template for you to adapt or we can work with you to construct checklists to ensure that the task complies with law and best practice. The checklists can be daily, weekly, monthly checks or Emergency procedures to ensure that emergency taks have a procedure that can be followed by all involved. All of these can be linked so that they can be recorded locally or online.

We have a lot of experience in working with marine civils companies and in Port Operations.  Often this is for advising and risk assessing sites next to or near the water where workers are outside of their normal areas of operation. This has included types of floatation devices and lifejackets for the workers to the types shoreside rescue equipment and rescue boats.

In the past we have even delivered waterside training to staff on the use to lifejackets and waterside safety. The largest of these projects was working on the Thames Tideway project and City Airport runway expansion projects. We trained around 1800 individuals over a period of 5 years and advised on projects on the early days.

This is an ever-evolving area and new to safety management systems. We can offer advice on the current thinking and how cyber systems can be maintained, protected and backed up for compliance, security
and safety. 

The required extent of cyber security measures shall be commensurate with the size, complexity and type of operation of the vessel, and shall be determined by the vessel owner/operator and shall be to the satisfaction of the Certifying Authority.Cyber security measures shall include at a minimum the following113, 114:

1. the systems, assets, data and capabilities which would impact vessel operations if disrupted;

2. roles and responsibilities of those managing cyber-risks. This shall be documented and made available to the Certifying Authority on request;

3. measures to minimise risks and defend against cyber-attacks;
   means to successfully detect a cyber-attack in a timely manner;

4. resilient means to restore key systems;

5. means to ensure critical back-up systems maintain functionality during a cyber-attack;

6. measures to successfully back-up and restore critical systems following a cyber-attack.