737S News

The maritime industry goes from cycle to cycle, living with and by uncertainty. You could even say that our industry embraces risk. This means that “What’s next?” is always a relevant question – and one that gets some interesting responses. During Nor-Shipping 2011, we discovered that the “what’s next” question really resonates with the industry when we used it to support the theme “Next Generation Shipping” for the event week. The standing-room only audience at the Nor-Shipping…

The aviation industry learned a hard lesson earlier this year regarding regulatory compliance. While the lessons learned from the incident are many, the common theme that should be taken away by the maritime industry is that an owner and/or operator is responsible for compliance regardless of what individual regulatory personnel may say, accept, or even put in writing. For maritime companies without a compliance program, it has become common practice to rely primarily upon the opinions of individual Coast Guard inspectors or commands regarding regulatory compliance issues, despite occasionally receiving inconsistent guidance. What is wrong with this strategy? In the future another inspector may enforce a regulation which wasn't previously enforced.