Know Your Fleet with Tanker Information Management

Shoreside technical and commercial teams are inundated with demands for documentation, which are only increasing as tighter risk, compliance, and sustainability regulation becomes the new normal.

From terminal questionnaires, to PSC inspection outcomes, to CDI and SIRE inspections and more, the ability to stay up to date on vessel information to make business decisions is essential. Managing this documentation has historically been a manual task, but tanker information management systems like Q88 are designed to streamline these processes and improve visibility across the industry. Here are four ways a tool like Q88 can help shipowners be more accurate and more efficient in their pre-fixture processes and decision-making.

Questionnaires

Originally built to support the eponymous Questionnaire 88, the Q88 platform has become the industry standard for tanker information management, enabling owners, operators, charterers, and brokers to collaborate and exchange vessel information in a user-friendly interface.

With Q88, filling out questionnaires takes minutes instead of the hours it took in the past, saving valuable time and effort for other tasks. Today, the platform hosts over 1,300 questionnaires and templates, guaranteeing that users can find exactly which one they need for any voyage. By providing a standard questionnaire and supporting automatic completion, Q88 also mitigates dependence on manual data entry. Changes made to information on one questionnaire can be carried through to others when the fields are the same, such as the vessel flag or operator information, saving you time and duplicative work.

Certificates

Q88 also supports certification management and enables users to bundle them with questionnaires as attachments for sharing with other parties. There are over 80 standard system certificates available on the platform, with more being continuously added as well as providing each customer the ability to add custom certificate and document categories. Users can view and filter certificates by questionnaire, whether they have attachments, and if they are approaching or past their renewal date. The Q88 platform will note whether certificates are valid, expired, or due for renewal and send notifications when items are coming up for renewal, ensuring that users remain up to date and don’t send expired certificates. Equipped with a centralized solution to store and update vessel documents, owners can better market their vessels to counterparties, more seamlessly provide other stakeholders the information they need, and avoid costly gaps in knowledge within their own businesses.

Officer Matrix

The crew on board a vessel is just as important as the vessel itself. Since COVID-19 threw a spotlight on the plight of our sailors, crewing clauses are becoming more common in charter party agreements and charterer-specific requirements. In Q88, users can maintain up-to-date crew information with the OCIMF-compliant Officer Matrix. Shipowners can filter by their vessel and view the rank, qualifications, and experience of each officer on board to ensure compliance.

Users can further customize their view to include details such as the length of officers’ tours to reduce the likelihood of accidents from crew fatigue and ensure Social ESG targets are met, as well as each crew member’s specializations, radio qualifications, companies they are in and out of compliance with, and more. The Officer Matrix also allows for offline support, meaning you can maintain the vessel’s crew certification onboard without the need for internet connectivity. This feature includes email support and automatic system imports.

Inspections

The inspections information available in Q88 gives shipowners quick access to tanker information, including data provided by other parties, to ensure vessels meet the latest compliance including the updated 10.4 Inspection Standard from the Chemical Distribution Institute (CDI). This means you don’t need to keep checking updated inspection criteria and can rest assured you are working from the most up to date industry standards. Shipowners can record inspections and view associated observations to analyze their vessels against industry benchmarks.

As companies are under increasing pressure to manage and share data about their fleet performance and operations, it is important to look at inspection outcomes across a fleet, rather than problem solving to pass individual certificates and inspections. By capturing inspections outcomes from all of your vessels, you can quickly generate a repository to be mined for insights. From here, technical operators can look at trends and gain insights into performance-related issues, take proactive action, and employ preventative maintenance. Issues that continually repeat over time and across multiple vessels can be built into your technical maintenance programs, reducing time vessels are detained and costly one-off upgrades.

This requires the implementation of a system that allows you to mine insights from your historical data and will give you the ability to spot bigger problems. Q88 also offers the ability to benchmark yourself against the whole industry based on a fleet, time period, and inspection type in order to see how you compare to your competitors. You can also see the information available to charterers and how they are viewing your vessel as part of their pre-fixture reviews.

The Industry Standard

As the industry standard for vessel information management with over 80% of the tanker industry represented, Q88 is dedicated to bringing its expertise to benefit the tanker market. The data within Q88 is timely, accurate, and regularly updated by vessel owners and operators. Users can rest assured that information in the platform comes straight from the source, enabling them to make better, more accurate vessel decisions and easily share documentation with other parties.

Want to know your fleet better? Request a demo and see what Q88 can do for you.

Tags: tanker