ISM · ISPS · MLC · SOLAS · MARPOL
Maritime Compliance & Assurance
Audits, gap analyses and readiness reviews across the core conventions, conducted personally by a former flag-State Deputy Commissioner who has worked both sides of the audit table: inside a flag administration, and in a leading classification society, latterly as Corporate Vice President. ISM, ISPS and MLC auditor. The work is non-statutory.
It shows you what a real audit will find, before the real audit finds it.
What's Included
- Internal ISM, ISPS and MLC audits conducted to flag-State method, including ship security plan and security procedure review
- Convention gap analysis against SOLAS and MARPOL requirements
- Flag and Port State Control readiness reviews before inspections fall due
- SMS document review, with findings written so your DPA can act on them directly
- Close-out verification of audit findings and PSC deficiencies
How We Engage
- 1
Define the fleet, the certificates and the audit window.
- 2
Audit on board, or through full document review, to flag-State method.
- 3
Deliver findings, corrective-action guidance and close-out verification.
Outcomes
Our audits are internal and non-statutory. They use flag-State method and criteria, but they carry no statutory effect: they support your statutory certification and they never replace your flag's or your RO's own audits. Certification decisions rest with your flag administration and its recognized organizations. Our reports are prepared for the party that instructs us and for the purpose stated in the engagement. Reliance by any other party requires our written agreement.
Questions we're asked
What is the difference between an internal audit and the flag's audit?
The flag's audit is statutory and leads to certification decisions. An internal audit is your rehearsal and your early-warning system, and the ISM Code requires it in its own right. Ours are conducted to flag-State method by a qualified ISM, ISPS and MLC auditor who spent seven years inside a flag administration, which is what makes the rehearsal worth having.
How should we prepare for a Port State Control inspection?
Work the evidence, not the paint. Certificates in order, crew able to demonstrate drills and familiarization, the known deficiency areas for your ship type closed out, and a paperwork trail behind every recent repair. A readiness review before entering a targeted region identifies findings you can close before arrival. Where crew competence is the gap, SwiftAction Academy's course library is mapped across the 627 deficiency codes SolarisTech compiled from the Port State Control MoU regimes.
Our SMS is thick and nobody reads it. Is that a finding?
It will become one, because an SMS the crew cannot use fails its purpose regardless of its page count. The fix is usually subtraction: procedures rewritten around what the ship actually does, so the audit trail shows a living system rather than a shelf document.
Do internal audits replace the flag's or RO's audits?
No. They prepare you for them and they never replace them. Statutory certification stays with your flag and its recognized organizations. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something the regulations do not permit.
YOUR REVIEWER
Thomas Blenk
American Bureau of Shipping, latterly Corporate Vice President, Global Marine Sectors. Deputy Commissioner of Maritime Affairs, Republic of the Marshall Islands. ISM, ISPS and MLC auditor.
Get ahead of your next audit.
Tell us your fleet and your next audit window.