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In response to the reported concern of the British Government’s Department for Transport (DfT) about the growing number of small vessel engine failures at sea in recent years, and the resulting increased burden on the public services, the Small Ship Group of the Institute of Marine Engineers, Scientists and Technologists (IMarEST) has initiated a simple reporting procedure for failures to gather initial data from owners, operators, insurers and their surveyors; plus the rescue services. SSG define a small ship as one of approximately 500 grt or less.
The Small Ships Group hopes to be able to form some initial picture of the problem in about six month’s time”. It is also hoped that the engine manufacturers and their agents and dealers will be able to both contribute to, and ultimately benefit from fully analysed reliability data. No ship or owner ‘names and addresses’ will be retained, and any collected would be used only for verification of the source, then deleted. The intention is to process purely generic data.
In the longer term, and depending on the quantity and quality of the data collected, the SSG envisage the possible establishment of a permanent database for small ships and their equipment.
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