Maintenance & Techniques

Vibration, infrared thermography and alignment: the three predictive techniques genuinely applicable on board without permanent instrumentation. Measured quantities, sensor locations, fault signatures, criticality thresholds, round organisation and PMS integration, with a cost / interval / detected fault table.

Fuel is a vessel's largest variable OPEX line. Compare the three measurement methods — tank soundings, volumetric and Coriolis flow meters, running hours — with their real accuracy and traps. Bunker quantity control, data structuring, g/kWh KPIs and alert thresholds that turn consumption into a machinery diagnostic tool.

On board, maintenance rarely kills through the tool and often through the atmosphere. This guide covers the four permits that frame a job at sea, isolation adapted to a vessel's energy sources, STCW competence requirements, and what resolution MSC.581(110), adopted by the IMO on 27 June 2025, changes for enclosed space entry.

On board, an identification label has to survive heat, vibration, salt spray and high-pressure washing. This article covers how to choose the label material for each area of the vessel, what to encode in the code itself, how to tag spares and safety equipment with expiry dates, and why offline scanning is what lets a newly joined officer retrieve an item's history without asking anyone.

Ashore, a breakdown costs hours of downtime. At sea, it costs a port call, a tow, sometimes a detention. This guide gives the equation that decides the move to condition-based maintenance on a vessel: which assets to monitor, with which technologies, what classification societies will credit, and how to put figures on the return across a fleet.

A preventive maintenance plan that works ashore often fails on board: the crew changes every two months, the part only arrives at the next port call and the ISM auditor asks for proof. Here is the four-step method for building a PMS that is realistic, workable at sea and defensible at a classification society survey.