The International Safety Management (ISM) Code entered into force on 1st July 1998, with amended text introduced on 1st July 2002.
The purpose of this Code is to provide an international standard for the safe management and operation of ships and for pollution prevention.
Both the company and ship must comply with the requirements of the ISM Code.
Safety performance
However, lack of measurement of safety performance and, as a result, lack of assigning credit for the contribution of ISM to risk management onboard is reducing this powerful concept to paper exercise.
The answer of RCCL to this problem, in the spirit of continuous safety improvement and in line with the regulations of the ISM code, is FOCUS, an initiative taken to devise and implement a safety system as it pertains to all maritime elements based on measurement, verification and feedback to support and promote continuous improvement and thus nurture safety culture.
A system is already in place with main key risk contributors and associated factors and KPIs identified and a measuring and monitoring system being established.
Considerable more effort will be required to institutionalise this but the impact will be game-changing. This initiative will require continuous support and could become one of the focal areas of the Centre.
