At the 20th meeting of the Port State Control Committee in Male, Maldives, in August, the Committee finalised the criteria for implementation of New Inspection Regime (NIR) for the Indian Ocean MOU (IOMOU) for providing a more risk based system for identifying and targeting non-complaint ships for inspections from 1st January 2018.
As explained, under the NIR of IOMOU, existing targeting factor matrix is replaced by the Ship Risk Profile (SRP). The SRP will be assigned as High Risk Ship (HRS), Standard Risk Ship (SRS) or Low Risk Ship (LRS), based on generic and historic performance parameters such as Type of Ship, Age of Ship, Flag State Performance, Recognized Organization Performance, Company Performance and Ship Performance.
Each performance parameter will be evaluated using appropriate formula and weighting points will be assigned for HRS, SRS and LRS as per defined criteria. Finally, sum of weighting points pertaining to all considered performance parameters, in real time utilizing PSC inspection and ship historical data over running 36 months will decide High, Standard or Low risk ships.
Periodic Inspections are carried out at intervals determined by SRP. Unexpected factors may trigger an inspection in between, referred to as an Additional Inspection.
For Periodic Inspections, time window is based as per SRP as follows:
- For HRS – between 5-6 months after the last periodic/additional inspection
- For SRS – between 10-12 months after the last periodic/additional inspection
- For LRS – between 18-24 months after the last periodic/additional inspection
For selection of inspections, the priority is based as per SRP and is as follows:
- Priority I: Ships must be inspected, for which the time window has been closed or there is an overriding factor.
- Priority II: Ships may be inspected which is within the time window of inspection or the port. State considers there is an unexpected factor warrants an inspection.
The priority and the level of selection will be shown for each ship in the information system of IOMOU. The NIR will assign SRP to every individual ship available in the database of the IOMOU.