Cons.A.R. - Italian Shipowner's Research Consortium

FULL TITLE
Risk-Based Expert System for Through-Life Ship Structural Inspection and Maintenance and New-Build Ship Structural Design

DURATION
36 months (3 years)
Start Date: 01/10/2008
End Date: 30/09/2011

The main objective of the project is to provide to the shipping companies (owners, managers) a useful tool which keeps control of all the structural aspects of the ship with the main purpose of an optimization of the overall management of the ship's operations and trades.
The project is addressed to two particular types of ship: Bulk carriers and Tankers.
The first challenge to face is the creation of a standardized methodology for performing inspection on-board a ship. Appropriate recording tools and codification will be adopted in order to store, without the risk of misunderstanding, data coming from inspections and relative to all kind of structural problems (cracks, deformation, indents, coating conditions, corrosion, thickness reduction).
All this data, in a "sanitized" form that will maintain commercial confidentiality together with historical data of a great number of European ships, will be stored in a Central Statistical Database (CSD). The database would be fed with information coming from all the different actors involved during the life-cycle of a ship (shipyards, shipping companies, classification societies, inspection and service societies, etc.) and addressed principally for managerial use.
This project will provide a better methodology that will (on an ongoing basis) combine detailed analysis of long term experience from large numbers of ships and the reliability/risk-based methods to provide useful and justifiable risk-based inspection plans and design guidance.

This will lead to better inspections, more important defects being found and repaired, better design, fewer pollution incidents and the saving of lives.

Main CONS.A.R.'s objectives in the project are the following:

Easy control and continuous consciousness capability from the chiping company side, through a rational use of inspection's data (class and internal data).
The reduction in maintenance costs. The support in the phase of the price request for the repair works.
The ship maintenance optimization.
The lenghtening of the ship's life, the reduction of risks for major damages and unexpected structural downfalls.

CONS.A.R. involved some of its associates for the constitution of an initial shipowners unit in order to feed and test the functionalities and the validity of a centralized database prototype.

In order to assure the data utilization and to protect the privacy, CONS.A.R. imposed the condition that the test would be done under its strict supervision.

CONS.A.R. realized the project web-site and it's cooperating in other activities and it's charged of the management of the activities concerning updates and project results.

Last 17th-18th May, in Lisbon @ IST, was held the RISPECT project meeting, with the presence of the European Community Project Officer. The Officer participated in order to evaluate the advancement status of the activities and to decide in reference to the prorogation asked by the coordinator.
Following the discussions happened during the meeting, a prorogation of 9 months (with deadline on 30th June, 2012) has been approved. Therefore, a consequent replanning of the activities has to be done.

The participants to the projects could be divided in Industrial Partners and Research Partners.

The participants to the projects could be divided in Industrial Partners and Research Partners.
The Industrial Partners are actively involved into the maritime community and they are:

Atlantec Enterprise Solutions (D), Bureau Veritas (FR), Consorzio Armatori per la Ricerca (IT), Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade (PT) Shipbuilders and Shiprepairers Ass. (UK), The Welding Institute (UK), Se.Ma2 Services for Maritime Management (IT)

The Research Partners are Entities with maritime specializations and they are:

Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde (UK), Gdansk University of Technology (PL), University of Newcastle (UK), Instituto Superior Técnico (PT)