From the MarineCraft Journal: in-depth articles, expert perspectives, and the latest industry developments for the professionals who keep the maritime world moving. Written for shipowners, offshore operators, engineers, and enthusiasts alike.
Coating in a Tropical Climate: Why a C5 Spec Fails
A specification written in Rotterdam and applied in Johor is not the same specification. The standards themselves say so, in a category most buyers…
Antifouling and the AFS Convention: TBT to Cybutryne
An antifouling coating is the only paint on a ship that is regulated for what it releases rather than what it protects.
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PSPC Ballast Tank Coating: What MSC.215(82) Requires
Most coating specifications describe what to apply. This one names a service life, requires a certified inspector to watch it go on, and creates a document that stays with the ship long…
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The Drone Insurance Requirement That Is Not in the Rules
The regulator decides whether you may fly. The client’s contracts department decides whether you may work. Operators who confuse the two arrive fully compliant and still lose the job.
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What Drone Tank Inspection Removes, and What It Cannot
Inside a tank there is no satellite signal, no ambient light and nowhere to land. What a drone removes from that job is real and substantial.
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Flying a Live Process Area Needs a Different Aircraft
A shutdown removes the atmosphere that makes a drone dangerous. Flying a live process area does not, and no amount of procedure converts a standard aircraft into equipment that belongs there.
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A Camp Kitchen Is Not a Restaurant, and the Risk Differs
A kitchen serving a few hundred residents concentrates risk in a way a restaurant does not. The same meal reaches the same workforce at the same hour, and what follows is not…
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Two Approvals: Why the Shoplot Conversion Usually Fails
A vacant shoplot ten minutes from site looks like the obvious answer to a housing problem. It usually cannot be made lawful, and the reason has nothing to do with the labour…
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Apply for the Accommodation Certificate Before You Need Beds
The certificate is not a formality collected on the way to mobilisation. It is an application, assessed, that can be rejected, and the date your contract says people start is not a…
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Thermal Spray Aluminium, Where Paint Has No Realistic Life
Thermal spray aluminium is not a premium paint. It is a metallic coating bonded by impact, and it gets specified where a conventional system has no realistic life and the asset is…
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Passive Fire Protection: The Datasheet Is Not the Approval
A product datasheet reports how something performed in one test, under one configuration, against one fire. Approving passive fire protection means knowing which fire, which configuration, and which properties the test deliberately…
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Cathodic Protection and Coating Must Be Designed Together
Cathodic protection and coating are bought from different suppliers, designed by different engineers and inspected by different people. The failure that follows belongs to nobody, which is precisely why it keeps happening.
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Why a Tank Lining Is Tested and a Coating Is Only Inspected
A protective coating on a structure is inspected. A lining inside a tank is tested, electrically, across every square metre of its surface.
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Attrition Is a Welfare Problem Before It Is a Pay Problem
A worker who leaves mid-project takes the mobilisation cost with them, along with the induction, the site familiarity and the permit competency.
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What an Accommodation Inspection Actually Looks At
Contractors prepare for an accommodation inspection by cleaning. Inspectors arrive with a tape measure and a headcount, because the requirements are dimensional and they scale with how many people are actually living…
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Dry Film Thickness and the 80/20 Rule
Film thickness is the one coating parameter everybody measures and almost nobody agrees on. The argument always arrives after the scaffolding is down and the money is spent, and it is nearly…
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Corrosivity Category Belongs to the Asset, Not the Site
A facility gets one coating specification because that is easier to buy and easier to apply. The structure then fails wherever the exposure was worst, on a schedule nobody planned for, and…
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Act 446 After 2020, and the Duty You Cannot Outsource
An employer who books beds with an uncertified provider has not transferred the problem. The Act places duties on the employer and on the accommodation provider separately, so what outsourcing moves is…
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Surface Preparation Is Where the Warranty Is Won or Lost
When a coating fails early, the paint gets the blame. Most of the time the cause was settled before the first coat went on, in a blast that met one of three…
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HAZID and HAZOP, and What Each Should Actually Produce
Both terms get used as though they meant the same thing, usually by people commissioning one and receiving the other.
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Container Fires Start With a False Declaration
When a container ship burns, the investigation usually ends at a document rather than at the firefighting equipment. A box declared as machinery parts was stowed as machinery parts, and nothing about…
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