IMCA DP Practitioner Accreditation Scheme, March 2021

Dear DP Accredited Practitioner,

Welcome to this 2nd DP Accredited Practitioner news bulletin. We are well into 2021 and regrettably, there is no let up with the issues we face in dealing with the pandemic. We continue to see many working lives brought to a halt and widespread shutdowns of normal life with impacts on surveying, auditing and inspecting for all. We at IMCA remain confident that we will all prevail with a large amount of patience, but there is no doubt that the new normal we will have to adjust to will be rather different to the one we left behind.

On a brighter more positive note, this bulletin marks just over 20 months of the accreditation scheme – launched on 1 May 2019 with the first set of exams held on 25 June 2019. The Accreditation Scheme was the output of a cross industry workgroup consisting of DP vessel owners/operators, training providers, DP consultants, major energy companies and relevant organisations.

This workgroup was tasked by IMCA’s Marine Division Management Committee in 2018 to devise a scheme to improve consistency and conduct of DP Trials. Additionally, the scheme set an industry recognised level of knowledge for DP Practitioners responsible for developing, witnessing and reporting of DP Trials and those responsible for the management of the DP assurance processes.

20 months on and we wanted to provide our accredited practitioners with an update of some activities that we have been working on within IMCA and the DP Committee of IMCA and provide some details on what we are planning for the future.

Despite the pandemic and the early interruption to the examination programme, we have managed to run exams in most of our advertised locations during the second half of 2020 albeit with varying degrees of restrictions in place. Recently, we had to cancel our London, Aberdeen, Dubai and Rio exams due to second wave lockdowns, however we anticipate getting back to our normal examination schedule in Q2 2021. Our sincere thanks go out to those candidates that have remained flexible and our thanks of course to the exam centres who have readily adapted to new ways of dealing with hygiene and social distancing. In the meantime, we continue to have a steady stream of applications being received by our team in the Secretariat and these are now being processed more efficiently thanks to the introduction of a Microsoft Dynamics solution.

We continue to receive positive feedback from the industry about the scheme and about the many vessel owners / operators gladly adopting a policy of utilising IMCA DP accredited practitioners. There is still more to do in terms of continuing to communicate the benefits of the accreditation scheme and so we also ask for your assistance in this regard. Please continue to promote the scheme within your client base. As a reminder, the basic aims and objectives for the scheme are:

• Improve the consistency and conduct of DP trials;
• Set a recognised level of knowledge for DP practitioners responsible for developing, witnessing and reporting of DP trials, and those responsible for the management of DP assurance processes.
• Provide assurance that DP practitioners attending vessels for trials are accredited to a recognised standard;
• Provide assurance that personnel conducting DP assurance duties in both vessel operator and client offices are accredited to a recognised standard;
• Meet the requirement of the OCIMFs Dynamic Positioning Assurance Framework which calls for verification that shore based DP personnel and DP assurance practitioners are qualified, experienced and competent;
• Assist DP trials practitioners and DP office-based personnel to maintain and increase their knowledge base.

Please stay safe during these continued turbulent times.

IMCA Secretariat

CONTENTS

• Marine DP committee update
• DPO Continuous Professional Development
• DP Station Keeping Event Bulletins
• DP Accreditation Scheme Continuous Professional Development
• DP Guidance withdrawal
• And Finally…

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT IMCA:
Email: ac@legacy.imca-int.com or visit  IMCA DP Accreditation