CEO Chat (continued)


I had an answer to this dilemma, but sadly I don’t. Our President, Geoff Waddington, and I have discussed this situation many times and he has no answers either other than regulating the marine surveying profession.


I believe the accepted phrase that best describes this is ‘free market economics’, which is helpfully described by Wikipedia as ‘a system based on supply and demand with little or no government control. It is a summary description of all voluntary exchanges that take place in a given economic environment’. So, for as long as marine surveying remains essentially an unregulated profession, this will remain an issue and one that is almost impossible to deal with. The pressure remains with IIMS (and other interested parties) to continue to educate the boating public, vessel owners and the shipping industry at large to only instruct surveyors who are at the very least members of one of the professional bodies - or face the potential consequences of not doing so. We have much more work to do in this area.


It is worth stressing at this point the importance and value of the IIMS Professional Assessment Committee for it is their job to deny these ‘cowboys’ and others who cannot substantiate their claimed experience from becoming members - and they do a good job. The moral of this story is that we must continue our collective efforts to strive towards some form of higher recognised industry standards that the best can aspire to.


It


profession is for professional marine surveyors only. OK rant over (for now).


But coming back to training for a moment, (which is where I started), IIMS is working on some fascinating projects. One such programme, just announced, is a method to deliver tonnage measuring training remotely to surveyors around the world (partly accelerated by the pandemic which forced a rethink). This initiative has won approval from the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA). The process leading to becoming authorised as an IIMS tonnage surveyor is being delivered in two parts. Part I delivered by online seminar is straightforward. For Part II, we are using a highly innovative methodology to find out if someone knows what to do and how to conduct a tonnage measurement on a vessel up to 24 metres. I hope I might have whetted your appetite for more information on this initiative. If so, the first remote tonnage measuring Part I seminar is planned for 22 September and more details can be found at https://bit.ly/3ftvhJf.


Survey well.


Mike Schwarz Chief Executive Officer


takes time. Ultimately the marine surveying


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