There’s no technology on the horizon that’s going to replace the shipboard engineering watchstander anytime soon, that’s for certain. ”You need to be in the engine room, looking around, touching, smelling, listening for unexpected changes in the plant,” says Tim Klaybor, former Chief Engineer, now General Manager of Fassmer Lifeboats. ”Considering anything to the contrary would be a very bad idea.”
There is however, technology that has been in service on US Navy warships that may prove to be of great assistance to marine engineers on board commercial vessels, and to the technical superintendents and fleet managers ashore.
At SMM Hamburg last week, I met up with Ken Krooner, a former US naval officer, now President of Engineering Software Reliability Group (ESRG) which provides leading-edge data analysis and remote monitoring technology for shipboard engineering systems. They recently partnered with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) in order to integrate ESRG’s real-time data management and analytics to the marine and offshore industries.
This system, which has been in use in the US Navy for over a decade, “can help operators resolve issues faster, leading to fewer non-compliance events, lower energy and fuel consumption, less downtime and lower maintenance costs,” says Krooner.
Speaking with former US Navy Chief Engineer, Kate Macleod today, she describes this technology:
“The ability to have engineers at NAVSEA remotely monitor our equipment and provide a subject matter expert-level of assistance to the shipboard engineers in real-time was extremely valuable. As shipboard manning numbers continue to decrease, systems like this will be even more useful to the US Navy.”
It appears the commercial sector has finally taken notice.
The technology integration of ESRG’s OstiaEdge® software with ABS’ NS5 Enterprise fleet management platform may prove to be extremely useful to ship managers who are looking for real-time data to help optimize their fleets.
“The future of operational optimization and regulatory compliance in the marine and offshore industries lies in the ability to collect, analyze and act upon real-time data gathered from operations around the world,” said Karen Hughey, President and COO, ABS Nautical Systems. “ESRG’s experience and capabilities in vessel operational monitoring and analysis will help strengthen the NS5 Enterprise fleet management platform and enhance future product and service offerings from ABS Nautical Systems.”
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If the US Navy has indeed been at this over over 10 years, its a major leap for them.
The engineering plant on the FFG I was on back in the mid 90′s was scary.
Coming to the Navy from the merchant marine I was expecting to find well maintained equipment in pristine spaces. After all, there was a huge budget and nearly limitless manpower, right? WRONG! The reality was quite the opposite.
Underfunded, undermanned, and just barely keeping the lights on was the norm. The rediculous ‘PMS’ program at the time seemed to encourage taking functioning machinery apart just for the sake of taking it apart and reassembling it.
Reliability of numerous systems especially Ships Service Diesel Generators (SSDG) and watermakers was horrendous. We left for deployment with 4 working SSDGs. Detriot 16V149TI’s, as I recall. The first one blew multiple cylinder heads within 24 hours, and it was all downhill from there. By the end of deployment we had 2 barely reliable ones, one completely unreliable one, and one that supplied spares to the others.
I hope it has improved significantly.
This system is based on NS5…its a pipe dream until ABS NS get their programmers to make the program reliable. As of now ABS NS is hardly a reliable form of recording data, is not user friendly in its basic form. Additionally the data requirements for this are big, ABS NS can hardly even record and replicate photos and entries for continuous survey requirements, it certainly cannot provide much beyond basic text for replication back to the shore base. Keep up the marketing and keep pumping out the crap with no real backbone functioning software.
Amen brother. NS5 can kiss the fattest part of my A$$.