TWENTY YEARS OF THE ISM CODE


SO WHAT NEXT?


The International Maritime Organization (IMO) International Management Code for the Safe Operation of Ships and for Pollution Prevention (ISM code) first became mandatory in 1998. Twenty years and five amendments later, we reflect on how the code is doing and what still needs to be done.


BACKGROUND The ISM code was born out of a series of serious shipping accidents in the 1980s, the worst of which was the roll-on roll-off ferry Herald of Free Enterprise that capsized at Zeebrugge in March 1987, killing 193 of its 539 passengers and crew. The cause of these accidents was a combination of human error on board and management failings on shore.


What followed was a much- needed change in maritime safety administration. In October 1989, the IMO adopted new Guidelines on Management for the Safe Operation of Ships and for Pollution Prevention giving operators a, ‘framework for the proper development, implementation and assessment of safety and pollution prevention management in accordance with good practice’. Following industry feedback, the guidelines became the ISM code in November 1993 and were incorporated in a new chapter IX of the IMO’s 1974 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) in May 1994 and became mandatory for companies operating certain types of ships, as from 1 July 1998.


Meeting the requirements of the code is evidenced by ships’ flag states in five-year ‘documents of compliance’ for ship operators and five-year ‘safety management certificates’ for ships, all subject to regular audits.


BY CAPT YVES VANDENBORN


INDUSTRY IMPACT The ISM code requires nearly all the world’s ship operators to write and implement on-board safety management systems (SMS) for their ships and make ‘designated persons’ ashore responsible for every ship’s safe operation. For many ship operators, ISM was simply a new legal framework for the safety systems they already had, but for others it led to major and much-needed changes in operating culture and organisation. It forced companies with poor or weak management systems to create a formal, structured safety management process for the first time, even if they only saw it as just more ‘red tape’.


Certainly, the ISM code has made shipping safer and cleaner over


the past two decades. In 2005, an international group of experts, on behalf of the IMO concluded that: ‘where the code is embraced as a positive step toward efficiency through a safety culture, tangible positive benefits are evident’.


The Standard Club has been assessing members’ management systems since 1993 through our member risk review programme. Linked to our ship risk review programme, the review was formally based on our ‘minimum operating standards’ but, since 1998, it focuses (among other things) on how ISM requirements are being met from the perspective of a liability insurer.


The Report • December 2018 • Issue 86 | 43


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