Many organisations that are working on or offshore today are in need of effective maritime management and are turning to paperless marine inspection.
Paperless marine inspection is quickly becoming the go-to solution for businesses that need to keep check of their processes whilst at sea. For the crew of a ship traversing stormy seas, for personnel managing offshore energy installations or simply caretakers of lighthouses, safety is paramount. Without thorough inspection checks, lives are at risk when navigating potentially treacherous working conditions. This is why almost all naval organisations carry out paperless marine inspections using mobile devices. Such inspections can take various forms to monitor ship compliance, health and safety measures or operational methods to ensure that best practice is being followed.
One of the many benefits that organisations are taking advantage of in paperless marine inspection is the ease of inspection. By utilising mobile devices in the form of a smartphone or tablet, field personnel or the crew of a ship can use all the features associated with such a device. This includes taking pictures of safety issues, scanning barcodes of life vest equipment or using RFID. Many mobile devices now feature offline recording via an inspection app as well as speech-to-text data input. This is useful for example on smaller vessels where the stability of the ship could lead to difficulties in making recordings on a pen and paper checklist. Features such as scanning barcodes or using RFID allow inspections to become highly efficient; allowing all the containers of the cargo ship to be checked much quicker than a traditional checklist system. The nature of the checklists being based on an app also obviously means that they can be tailored easier than a piece of paper. Before inspection, checklists can be created either through custom building, or by taking an industry regulation form which demonstrates direct compliance with standards, such as ISO 12402; ‘Personal Flotation Devices’. Inspecting using such a checklist clearly demonstrates and ensures that employees are following the top guidelines available and can highlight problems easier.
