Lloyd’s Register and DYNAMARINe have established a system to audit ship-to-ship providers against OCIMF guidance, with centralised reviews and shared reporting
Lloyd’s Register (LR) has entered into a collaboration with DYNAMARINe to deliver an independent auditing scheme for ship‑to‑ship (STS) transfers, with a defined separation between the auditing task and the technical review. LR would conduct audits of STS service providers against recognised guidance, and DYNAMARINe would review the resulting reports and publish a scored assessment for registered users.
The arrangement is aimed at providing a consistent framework for verifying provider competence and reliability and as a way to reduce duplicate client audits. The collaboration means that an International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) member takes a direct role in auditing STS service providers, a point intended to give users confidence about independence and discipline.
The collaboration aligns with recent updates to OCIMF STS guidance, which called for independent verification of provider self‑assessments. The partners presented this alignment as the basis for a repeatable approach that could be recognised across companies and geographies, producing comparable outputs for commercial and risk decision‑making and for internal governance purposes.
DYNAMARINe managing director Dr Alexandros Glykas explained how the collaboration would work in practice. He said DYNAMARINe would use records from its database to set the scope of each audit by reference to performance history and any prior findings. LR auditors would be trained on STS provider assessments and scheduled to conduct the work.
“providing a consistent framework for verifying provider competence and reliability”
When fieldwork had been completed, the audit reports would be returned to DYNAMARINe for review, at which point a scored outcome would be applied. The reviewed material would then be uploaded to a system where energy companies, protection and indemnity (P&I) clubs and shipowners could view and download it for internal use.
Dr Glykas said the intention was to assemble a pool of providers that demonstrated a safety culture, appropriate systems, competent personnel and relevant experience, and to present that performance in a consistent form.
Addressing the starting point for participation, Dr Glykas said: “The service provider will be invited to be audited.” He added that assessors would be trained for the purpose and that the programme would proceed once providers had agreed to take part. He described the outcome for users as a single assurance resource and for providers as a route to replace overlapping client audits with a single structured programme. He said the approach aimed to distinguish providers that met the expected safety culture while supporting improvement where gaps were found.
