Published 5 April 2013
The International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) Common Marine Inspection Document (CMID) and its electronic version eCMID have proved invaluable by providing a standard format for inspection of offshore vessels. Its use promotes safety and efficiency and can help reduce the number of repeat inspections on individual marine vessels. It has nearly 1,750 users in 76 countries, and can be used by IMCA members and non-members alike.
IMCA has just published ‘Guidance on using the eCMID and the CMID inspection report database’ (IMCA M 167 Rev 1).
“The purpose of this document is to give guidance on how to carry out a vessel inspection using IMCA M 149 ‘Common marine inspection document’ and use of the CMID database, located at www.imcacmid.com,” explains IMCA’s Technical Director, Jane Bugler.
“The CMID database was recently updated to include IMCA M 189 ‘Marine inspection for small workboats (Common marine inspection document for small workboats)’ which is now available in an electronic version, compatible with the CMID database.
“In preparing this guidance document, the aim has not been to describe one particular type of vessel but, detail the inspection results from a generic type of offshore vessel. The vessel of which an inspection is described could be a platform supply vessel, anchor handler, standby vessel, diving vessel, etc, as all the elements of the inspection are common to these vessels.”
The new document supersedes the previous version of IMCA M 167 ‘Guidance on the use of the Common Marine Inspection Document: A worked example’ and has a new title that reflects the changes in guidance relating to the eCMID and the CMID inspection report database.
The CMID Database website facilitates sharing of completed CMID reports, with an eCMID application available for inspectors to complete and upload their reports in a common format. Registration is open to those organisations operating offshore vessels, their clients and vessel inspectors (IMCA members and non-members alike).
The database currently shows that 184 updated CMIDs have been uploaded; and that 581 vessels have been registered on the system which has 1776 users in 76 countries. Registrations have been logged from 291 vessel operators, 166 operator and client organisations, 200 clients, 461 inspection companies and 23 industry organisations.
A series of eCMID/CMID workshops will be held during 2013, with information automatically going to all CMID database users. The database administrator is also available to provide company specific workshops to organisations requiring them – these can be arranged by contacting ecmid@imca-int.com.