NAVAL SHIP SAFETY ASSURANCE — GUIDANCE FOR NAVIES AND SHIPBUILDERS

This guidance for shipbuilders and navies was published by Lloyds Register Marine. The procurement and ownership of a capital-intensive asset such as a naval ship brings with it many challenges for those involved over the project lifecycle.

Ensuring that individual responsibilities and objectives are balanced with the constraints of limited budgets; increasing public scrutiny; greater attention to, and obligations for, provision of safety; and loss in some cases of critical technical knowledge mean that having a balanced assurance process is now a fundamental requirement. Gaining this multi-faceted assurance, whether from the perspective of the nation's government, the Chief of Navy, the designer/shipbuilder, or the sailor who will take the vessel into service means that the practices and solutions used in previous projects may not deliver the necessary outcomes.

The same challenges exist for those involved with commercially operated shipping, but they have been able to meet this challenge through closer co-operation between shipowners, designers and builders, regulatory authorities and classification societies. Unfortunately, it is not feasible to simply apply the commercial process to naval ships as many of the concepts and practices do not fit the procurement processes for government-owned assets.

This has led to the evolution over the last twenty years of naval classification from a facsimile of class for commercial ships into a more nuanced assurance process, as described in this publication. This process then provides appropriate assurance to the various stakeholders that their responsibilities are being discharged...