Tag: PSC Focus

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) announced that a new Focused Inspection Campaign (FIC) on hours of work and rest has been initiated from 1 May 2022 to run up to 30 June 2022.

In some cases the Pilot may inform the local PSC station for unsafe acts observed during pilotage, however this is not a common practice. So, what can a PSCO do?

Australia is one of the few places in which the ratio of safety and security inspections is very high; close to 1, meaning that almost all ships inspected for safety are inspected for security items also.

China was one of the countries which showed a significant reduction to PSC inspections during 2020, due to COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.

COVID-19 outbreak did not affect significantly the status and routine of PSC in the USCG area of responsibility. The reduction to inspections was 15% while the Global PSC showed a decrease number of 30%.

For a ship owner/manager, detention is a worst case scenario. Not only the ship is delayed, imposing additional costs but it also disturbs the records of ship owner and all managed fleet.

PSC Regimes use the Deficiency Category Areas in order to categorize the marked deficiencies during inspections. Although all PSC Regimes (MoUs and USCG) have a category for ISPS related deficiencies, USCG is the only regime which conducts independent Security Inspections almost same number with Safety Inspections.

Each country, following the guidance of the PSC regime it belongs, has specific PSC culture and practices but also each port has its own standards mostly depending on ships’ types calling at a port. Considering that each PSC Authority performs inspections during vessels’ port visit, a focus on ports’ PSC performance can reveal useful findings.

Besides the focused Concentrated Inspection Campaign on Emergency Systems, in general, the Port State Control Authorities are focusing on the procedures and equipment related to emergency systems during PSC inspections.

UK MCA announced that during November there were five new detention of foreign flagged vessels in a UK port, while seven foreign flagged ships remained under detention during November 2020 after failing port state control (PSC) inspection.