Maintenance & Techniques

Build the drydock specification from your maintenance history, control change orders and capture every job for the next cycle.

Drydocking is the largest maintenance item of the year and the one that drifts most. How to prepare it as a project, with a work list drawn from history and documented arbitration.

Engine failure is the first cause of long immobilisation and the most avoidable. The maintenance schedule by running-hour steps, from the daily check to the major overhaul.

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.