RS Rules Update: New Approval Scheme for Marine Equipment

Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (RS) has significantly updated the marine equipment approval and certification scheme. This step is driven by the advancement of the manufacturing technologies and processes and endeavors to optimise the RS-customer interaction and ultimately benefit the shipowner’s business performance by reducing capital expenditures to classification services for a ship under construction. The amendments will enter into force on December 1, 2019. The relevant Circular letter is published at rs-class.org in the Online Information – RS Circulars section. http://info.rs-head.spb.ru/public/rscirculars/2019-1290c.pdf

The amendments, covering in particular the scope of surveys, embrace the feedback from shipowners, shipbuilders and their suppliers as well as the best global practices of ship equipment approval.

The previous marine equipment approval scheme remained basically the same since the 1990-s. “As the new manufacturing technologies and robotisation of processes advance the impact of human element is gradually being mitigated, requesting a game changing approach to finished product approval,” Head of the RS Technical Supervision in Industries Division Alexey Filippov explained.

Shaping up the approval scheme in line with the latest production methods RS sorted all the types of marine equipment, materials and products subject to survey into five groups ranking as per safety impact rate and introduced several approval modes depending on the particular group and production volumes.

Key changes include empowering the manufacturer’s quality assurance unit to approve the products under certain groups and issue a declaration of conformity / draw up a certificate*. To employ this scheme a manufacturer has to type approve the product prototype and to pass general assessment and also, in certain cases, production process audit.

The new scheme is to save the costs of the RS surveyor direct participation in product approval and hard copy documentation postage as well as the time for drawing up the documents. The number of items requiring RS direct survey at the manufacturing site is virtually reduced by 72 percent (from 682 to 192 items), the full scope of surveys by 32 percent (from 889 to 602).

Since July 2018, the new scheme had been tested on radionavigation equipment (group 3) and received favourable feedback from the customers. In total, 12 companies have already passed the general assessment, a number of manufacturers have passed production process audit and may now supply equipment with a declaration of conformity.

“RS experts carried out extensive upgrading of our requirements to marine equipment approval. Staying committed to high safety standards, RS keeps up with the current level of technologies development and with the industry demands in new approaches to production processes approval,”  emphasized RS Director General Konstantin Palnikov.

*The certificates filled in and signed by an official of the manufacturer and endorsed by RS via manufacturers electronic account at rs-class.org are digitally signed and stored in the RS system. For the security purposes the certificates are accessible with a QR-Code or via a direct link.