Idwal adds crew welfare to ship inspection grading
Written by Nick Blenkey
Idwal senior marine surveyor and crew welfare advocate Thom Herbert: “Crew wellbeing factors will have a direct link to the Idwal Grade the vessel receives.”
Cardiff, Wales-based international ship inspection specialist Idwal has added 12 key crew welfare questions to its rigid and standardized inspection process.
With its extensive international surveyor network, Idwal has several representatives on board all types of vessels every day. While it has traditionally only covered data points related to ship condition and management, the company says that it is passionate about improving awareness of crew welfare issues and has long wanted to enhance its ship inspection reports by covering this often overlooked aspect of a vessel.
“We have added 12 new questions to our vessel checklist with the focus on objective questions to make the findings harder to ignore and focus on areas where any problem has a clear solution,” says Idwal senior marine surveyor and crew welfare advocate Thom Herbert. “Questions cover areas such as onboard Wi-Fi, gym facilities, onboard training facilities, access to bonded stores and catering services, and whether additional periods of rest are available.”
These crew welfare points will feed into the overall Idwal Grade, which is programmatically calculated from over 500 individual data points, captured during each vessel inspection and represented as a number between 1 and 100 for easy visualization of the integrity of the vessel.
“In this way, crew wellbeing factors will have a direct link to the Idwal Grade the vessel receives,” Herbert added.
Raising awareness of crew wellbeing is one of Idwal’s corporate objectives and it has recently strengthened this aim by becoming a co-sponsor of the Seafarers’ Happiness Index, run by the Mission to Seafarers, along with Standard Club.
