General

This standard describes a "best practices" approach to satisfying the CTF requirements of the IMO PSPC for seawater ballast tanks and double-side skin spaces. The guidelines provided are for use with implementation of hard-copy data collection systems as well as flat file electronic and relational database systems.

Best practices can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proved themselves over time for large numbers of people. A given best practice is only applicable to a particular condition or circumstance and may have to be modified or adapted for similar circumstances. In addition, a "best" practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered.

The primary goal of this standard is to provide an efficient and accurate methodology for the collection, management, and presentation of the data required by the PSPC and to facilitate the ongoing corrosion management of seawater ballast tanks and double-side skin spaces to reach the intended 15-year service life of installed coating systems.

The preconstruction phase documents, including selection of the coating system, inspection procedures, coating process, coating inspector qualification, and repair procedures for the coating during construction (areas that may become damaged during construction efforts or nonconforming installed coatings), establish an engineered path for the installation of the coatings on seawater ballast tanks or double-side skin spaces. This first step ends with the tripartite agreement, which shall be agreed on and signed by the shipyard or builder, coating manufacturer, and ship owner.

The second step is to ensure that the coatings are installed as specified. This shall be accomplished through extensive inspection and verification that the coating system is installed as specified in the tripartite agreement. This portion of the process could potentially generate thousands of sheets of documentation in support of the work effort and subsequent inspections. The requirements as noted in PSPC Paragraphs 3.4.2.3 and 3.4.2.5 overlap significantly in the data point collection. This duplication of effort can be identified as a quality control (QC)/quality assurance (QA) set of processes.

The CTF supplied to the ship should be in a standardized language format; English is currently the language used for the balance of IMO documentation. Therefore, the logical decision is to deliver the CTF to be kept shipboard in English. However, to remain practicable during the execution of the work, the majority of work and inspection records pertaining to the installation of the cited coatings should be collected in the native language. The required reports shall be translated into English for inclusion in the CTF.

Whereas completely electronic data acquisition and management systems have the ability to collect, manage, and present all the project data and require minimal space to store, this technology solution may not be employed by all shipyards, or effectively utilized by ships' personnel. Therefore, this standard addresses methods from hard-copy, handwritten forms through relational database-type systems.

The amount of data gathered during the application of ballast tank coatings when a ship is constructed as required by the IMO PSPC is significant. The requirements as noted in PSPC Paragraphs 3.4.2.3 and 3.4.2.5 overlap significantly in the data point collection. This standard strives to prioritize the value of the collected data for process verification during construction and management and presentation of said data for effective engineering use during the lifetime of the ship.

The familiarity and accuracy of data collection is significant with regard to performance of inspections. The goal of this process is to ensure the coatings are properly installed with appropriate documentation. A practical solution is to require the CTF deliverable to be summary sheets of the coating work and inspection results by tank/space identifier. The summary sheets provide the pertinent information and note traceability to the original documents, which are not necessarily a physical part of the onboard CTF.

Some data are useful on board and serve to validate compliance, and some are collected specific data points and measured values that are not useful to the ship or to validating organizations. Hence, the data are separated into two parts: data included in the CTF and available on board for validation, and data that are boxed up as drawings and stored (possibly off the ship) and presented only when and if needed.