ISM

As the Company has developed, it has applied the ethos of compliance and financial transparency to asset management and offers safety management systems to clients, recognising that in practical terms, any system introduced on board a yacht must be appropriate and user-friendly. It benefits no-one for a manager to dump a pile of manuals and contracts on a Captain’s desk and expect compliance with complex and seemingly irrelevant systems without question or explanation. The relationship needs to be one of partnership, mutual respect and integrity. Watkins’ senior managers regularly attend managed yachts and encourage positive relationships with crews at every level, be it management support to the Captain or essential crew training.

The commercial shipping industry had several years’ head start on implementing ISM and Watkins’ managers had been involved with this since the early 1990s. By the time this became mandatory for yachts, a sub-industry of expensive and not always effective ISM consultants had developed, seemingly charging by the page for written manual text. This resulted in a misconception that compliance is directly proportional to the amount of paperwork generated. Watkins’ staff have clear view of how this should be responsibly and reasonably applied to the large yacht industry. The key remains simplicity and not losing sight of the fundamental aims of the Code, safety and prevention of pollution. Safety management systems are produced for clients which provide full compliance with the Code and ownership of the user, whilst the Company measures their own success by the brevity of the product. Watkins’ safety management system has been commented on favourably by both end users andflag state registries. To further improve ease of access, Watkins Superyachts has had their safety management system reproduced electronically and whilst there will always be a need for some on-board documents to be available as hard copies, the ultimate aim of one day producing a paperless system remains possible if not probable.

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