RS STC Presidium Session
The meeting of the Scientific and Technical Council (STC) Presidium of Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (RS) was held on 15 December 2015.
The STC is one of the crucial components to ensure the RS activity on rendering the wide range of services in the area of marine transportation safety. The Council consists of the Presidium and 14 specialized sections and incorporates over 300 scientists and highly qualified specialists from over 30 scientific, design organizations, shipping companies, shipbuilding yards.
Opening the meeting, RS Director General Konstantin Palnikov said, "The STC goal, first of all, is to promote the improvement and development of the RS rules and other normative documents. Involvement of a broad spectrum of scientific organizations to development of the rules mirrors the global trend to complicating the requirements of classification societies, implementing new engineering calculation practice in the rules”.
He mentioned the practical application of the provisions of the IMO Polar Code entering into force in January 2017 among the actual international scientific and technical tasks being performed nowadays with direct involvement of RS and STC. The valid Polar Ship Certificate, as well as special ship operating document – Polar Water Operation Manual shall be available on board the ship to comply with the certain Code requirements.
“The main goal facing the Register is to provide competitive advantages to ships featuring RS ice class and being winterized by reducing, where practicable, the scope of additional requirements. One of the main part of this process is a dialogue between all the interested parties that is arranged within the STC sections. Therewith, the dialogue shall be carried out in several directions of the section activity at once, including hull strength, machinery installation, ship equipment and training of ship’s crew”, added K. Palnikov.
In his speech Oleg Timofeev, Deputy Chairman of the STC Presidium, Deputy Director General of Krylov State Scientific Centre noted that detecting optimal market sectors for advanced development, preparing new norms and requirements based on the expertise and up-to-date scientific and technical research are critical for the development of normative base of the classification society. He specified current trends of the domestic maritime industry: design and construction of the next generation of icebreakers and ice class ships, Arctic offshore development (geological exploration work, exploration drilling, production, transportation), localisation of ship and processing equipment production, strict requirements on safety and emissions. Moreover, according to O. Timofeev, state support being implemented within federal target programs on shipbuilding development is of vital importance for the industry stepping up.
The Presidium members focused on the necessity of continuous improvement of the RS Rules for icebreakers and ice ships. As stressed by Evgeny Appolonov, Acting Head of SPbMTU: “RS ice class rules ensure growth of efficiency and service reliability of ice class ships. Modern Russian ice class ships and icebreakers are designed and constructed according to these rules’ requirements. Nowadays, creation of new architect and design types of ships, increase in their size and power output require further rules development to solve problems in designing Arctic ships and offshore development facilities for the Russian Arctic and the Northern Sea Route.”
Yury Kostin, Deputy Head of the Federal Agency of Maritime and River Transport thanked the STC Presidium members and all the sections thereof for their work. He noted that he is always looking forward to receiving a new issue of the RS Research Bulletin journal and congratulated upon the inclusion of the journal in the list of Supreme Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation.
