Goal Based Standards using safety level approach
Regulations for newbuildings IMO has recently adopted amendments to SOLAS defining a Goal Based Standard (GBS) approach in how the IMO regulations for newbuildings should be developed and verified.This initial GBS used a deterministic approach which would accommodate the verification of conformity of the current prescriptive IACS Common Structural Rules for Oil Tankers and Bulk Carriers.The terminology needs to be clearly understood: the IMO GBS rules are a set of "rules for rules", which means the GBS rules are setting the standards which need to be met by the criteria contained in the rules developed by class or other industry bodies. It should also be noted that the verification of the class rules means an audit for "conformity" (instead of "compliance") with the standards.At its 89th session in London 11-20 May, the IMO's Maritime Safety Committee (MSC 89) has re-generated the process of developing GBS rules for newbuildings based on a Safety Level Approach (SLA). In other words, the GBS SLA set of standards will not be defined in a prescriptive manner, but a set of safety levels will be defined which will be developed by using formal safety assessment (FSA) approaches. So, in the main, the GBS SLA will ...
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