Clampdown on classification societies planned

by a staff reporter

Members of the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) which fail to meet basic industry standards will be suspended or even expelled for good, according to IACS chairman Dr Hans Payer.

Lloyd's List yesterday reported that an extraordinary meeting of the association will take place in Hamburg next Monday with the fall-out from the Erika disaster at the top of the agenda.

Dr Payer said IACS members will be asked to consider a draft of proposals aimed at ensuring all societies can prove they meet international standards.

"We will be discussing some tough issues in light of the Erika incident. If any IACS member is proven to be falling below the association's required survey standards, then we must now consider suspension."

He admitted that if a society is conclusively proven to be unable to meet those standards, then expulsion from IACS would be the only solution. He said the meeting would discuss the issue in detail next Monday.

Members would then have just over one week to deliberate, and a programme of changes and action would be agreed upon at a further IACS meeting on 16 February. In an interview with Lloyd's List, the IACS chairman admitted the role of classification societies always came into question after incidents such as the Erika. Next Monday's meeting already had a detailed agenda of proposed changes in the way IACS members should handle annual surveys of older tonnage. He said that inevitably, much of the discussion would focus on older tankers like the Erika.

While declining to give exact details, he said one proposal was for a 'third party' surveyor from another society to be present and to prepare a report whenever another society is asked to perform an annual survey on a tanker above a certain age.

"This 'third party' eye could help eliminate situations in which surveyors and societies sometimes have commercial pressure from owners during annual survey," he noted.

In the longer-term, he argued that classification societies should remain an integral part of the shipping industry. "They are still the most effective organisations to ensure that the world fleet is built and maintained to acceptable standards," he said.

He cautioned against individuals and groups which called for greater national or port state intervention in survey which, he argued, would lead to a morass of variable standards and a sea of paperwork.

"The societies will survive, but they must truly internationalise to be relevant in this century," he said. He admitted that most of the leading societies continued to be focused and run on broadly national lines whereas today they served ship owners and a world business community which recognised no borders. And he did not rule out the possibility of closer alliances and even mergers between some of the IACS membership.

"The trend towards merger, alliance and cross-border consolidation is a fact of world business today - especially in many parts of the shipping industry," he said.

"I think it is inevitable that classification societies could follow this trend in our efforts to maintain international standards, keep safety at the top of the agenda and generally serve the shipping community better."