structural safety – Officer of the Watch

Outfitting Related Structural Defects

This post is a summary of a Tanker Structure Co-operative Forum (TSCF) paper which reviews the outfitting defects of tankers and provides an analysis on potential causes and repair proposals. Service history of double hull oil tankers has revealed the fact that outfitting details are not to be neglected since about 5 in 6 defects found in the upper deck plate and stiffeners were cracks due to outfitting. Outfitting reinforcements should be considered as part of the ship structure because a failure of this kind of local reinforcement may affect even the primary structure and cause a critical failure.

The CIC was held between September and November 2011 and the report was approved by the 45th meeting of the Port State Control Committee in May 2012. The results of the CIC will also be submitted to the next meeting of the IMO Sub-Committee on Flag State Implementation.

In 4386 inspections carried out by the Paris MoU from the 1st of September to the 30th of November of 2011 on 4250 individual ships, a CIC questionnaire was recorded. 963 inspections (22% of the total number of CIC inspections) resulted in deficiencies related to the topic of the campaign. A total of 150 detentions (3,4%) were recorded during the CIC, of which 42 (1,0%) were due to deficiencies directly related to the CIC topic.