Yacht Planned Maintenance

In order to keep your vessel in working condition and safe there needs to be a Planned Maintenance System (PMS) implemented onboard and ashore.
A mega Yacht costing in excess of 40-50 Million Euros , can very quickly deteriorate and depreciate . The owners have invested heavily in their pride and joy and will now need to bear the costs involved in running such an investment.
They can chose between private operation and commercial i.e. Charter. The latter can sub divide further. No matter what they choose they will have to make sure that a professional and capable crew is handling this vessel and allow them a realistic budget for doing so.
Putting aside the cost of crew salaries and up keep , the second highest outgoing account is related to the vessel maintenance. This has to be planned and assessed very carefully and presented with all the I’s dotted and T’s crossed. Compromising in the out set will have direct consequence on the vessel , crew, owners and guests. Vessel condition will deteriorate rapidly causing lose in income (charter) or pleasure to the owners. This will also affect vessel safety .
Once this happens, and isn’t addressed immediately , this snowball keeps rolling down the sloop and gaining momentum until inevitably will reach an obstacle and…collapse… explode.
Usually at this stage it catches the attention of the Administration or Class of the yacht . That is if an annual inspection has not done this already.
It will be costly to set right and usually this exercise leaves you in the RED compared to a proper PMS and budget. A good PMS is all a cost effective one for the vessel and owners in the long run.
• What is the right PMS for a specific vessel?
It is planned, assessed and compiled by professionals i.e. Captain, Chief Engineer , Technical Managers, Port Captain, Superintendent etc…
It utilizes all manuals, maintenance instructions and info available from manufactures of equipment onboard and shipyard.
It involves years of experience in the field gained by the vessel/yacht management and crew.
Once you have a plan, you need to implement it and make sure that all involved are aware of it down to the last detail.
In order for the plan to succeed you must run it through a RISK ASSESSMENT filter. This will allow you to estimate the initial planning in connection to your shore based personnel and crew onboard.
The next stage is creating for the plan an inventory, spare parts, tools, material schedule. It will not be a good PMS if you set out to do a maintenance task and no tools available for the job or relevant parts / materials.
It will not work if you haven’t built in contingency planning and alternative dates. No good to plan a specific engine maintenance job on a set date (because that’s what the clock is saying in accordance with manufacture requirements), and the vessel is planned to be UNDERWAY.
So, Once we set down the plan, organized the required tools including specialized tools that might be keep ashore to allow access for all vessels , looked at our spare parts and material lists for the upcoming year , taken into account the working season and off season as well as planned dry docking and Captains leave of absence due to his wife giving birth to his first born child…
We can quantify and reach a budget.
OK, so we have a PMS in place and a general agreement by all involved .
We need a tool to “make” all this work ! Some will use the old and trusted paper, cards and documents running between shore and vessel. Others will utilize a more sophisticated approach with a dedicated PMS software generating reports in real time and keeping a close eye on the schedule , Job Cards and follow-ups.
What ever the choice may be at the end of the day it is only as good as the HUMAN BEING managing it . You can have the best system money can buy but it will not work on its own!!!