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Dynamic Positioning Assurance

DP Assurance

Assessment of the owner's operational resilience against the charterer's regime
Normative anchor
Charterer assurance regime · IMCA good practice
Answers to
Company DP Authority · Operations Director
Charging unit
Project
Primary output
Assessment report + RAG dashboard + action plan

The object of this scope is the owner's organisation, not the vessel. It assesses operational resilience across the four potentials — respond, monitor, learn and anticipate — with evidence recorded per item, a score from one to five, and RAG aggregation against the regime the charterer will audit against.

In scope

  • Assessment across the four potentials of operational resilience: the potential to respond, to monitor, to learn and to anticipate.
  • Evidence recorded per item — the score is never an opinion without a document behind it.
  • Scoring from one to five per item, aggregated to red, amber or green by area.
  • Assessment against the charterer's assurance regime, not only against the IMCA baseline.
  • Action plan with periods and named owners.

Not in scope

  • Assessment of the vessel's technical condition. That is the trials and survey scopes.
  • Writing the company procedures found missing. We identify the gap; the procedure is the owner's document.
  • Any representation to the charterer on the owner's behalf.

Declared so the conversation happens before the campaign, not in the middle of it.

Deliverables

What you receive

  1. Assessment report across the four potentials.
  2. Evidence checklist, item by item.
  3. RAG dashboard, with a cut by role so each officer sees what is theirs.
  4. Action plan with periods and named owners.
Scoping

What drives the effort

These move the size of the campaign. None of them moves the standard it is measured against.

These drive effort, not price. Pricing is quoted after the specification call, together with the documents we will need from you.

Recurrence is annual, and ahead of a charterer audit. IMCA is the standard; the charterer is the gate — a deliverable that conforms to the standard and is refused at the charterer's audit has not solved the client's problem.

Charterer readiness

What the charterer audits, and what answers it

The charterer assurance regime that governs DP operations in this market runs to 21 items and 81 sub-items. If you are holding it, the numbering below is theirs, not ours.
Instrument
The charterer's DP assurance manual
Phases
Two: documentary submission, reviewed remotely; then a feedback meeting, presented and questioned.
Scale
Each sub-item scored 1 to 5 — deficient, unacceptable, acceptable, satisfactory, excellent. A 3 means the minimum IMCA baseline is met, not that the item is good.

The pass mark moves with the rank. DPO 3.0 · Senior DPO 3.5 · DP Captain / OIM 4.0 — on the same aggregate score. One result can clear a DPO and fail a DP Captain on the same vessel, which is why the aggregate alone tells you very little.

ARespond

Whether the organisation can act when the event arrives — procedures, drills, operational state documents.

#RequirementAnswered byParty
03Execution of DP drillsDP Assurance—
06Familiarisation procedureDP Competence Assessment·Continuous Professional Development—
07CAM / ASOGCAM / TAM / ASOG·Continuous Professional Development—
13Vessel-specific DP manualDP Assurance·DP FMEA—
15Bridge management of DP operationsContinuous Professional Development·CAM / TAM / ASOG—

BMonitor

Whether it watches the right things often enough to see degradation before it matters.

#RequirementAnswered byParty
04Annual trialsDP Annual Trials·DP Gap AnalysisIndependent party
12Alarm suppression policyDP Gap Analysis·DP Assurance—
16DP indicatorsDP Assurance—
17CAM testingCAM / TAM / ASOG·DP Annual TrialsIndependent party
21Alarm suppression — the last threeDP Assurance·DP Gap Analysis—

CLearn

Whether a finding changes anything — failure reports, audit, competence, feedback loops.

#RequirementAnswered byParty
01Structured DP Assurance functionDP Assurance—
05CPD programmeContinuous Professional Development·DP Competence AssessmentIndependent party
10Engine-side maintenance trainingContinuous Professional Development—
11Failure reports and control actionsDP Incident InvestigationIndependent party
14Audit of the DP Assurance systemDP Assurance·Company DP Authority SupportIndependent party
18Contractor CPD — gap feedbackDP Competence Assessment·Continuous Professional DevelopmentIndependent party

DAnticipate

Whether it looks beyond the current window — drill matrix, SIMOPS, deferred maintenance, trials planning.

#RequirementAnswered byParty
02Annual drill matrixDP Assurance·DP Gap Analysis—
08SIMOPSDP Assurance—
09MaintenanceDP Gap Analysis·DP AssuranceIndependent party
19Annual trials scheduleDP Annual Trials—
20Deferred maintenance on critical equipmentDP Assurance—

Independent party — the audit requires this item to be executed or verified by someone outside the company. 7 of the 21 items do.

Where we can and cannot stand. We are eligible for the items marked above, and we are not eligible to independently verify work we produced ourselves. If we ran your trials, we do not audit their closure; if we wrote your FMEA, we do not review it. That limit is declared before a scope opens, not discovered during it.

Related scopes

What usually goes with it

CAM / TAM / ASOG

Which configuration the vessel operates in, and when it must stop.

DP Annual Trials

Whether the vessel still holds the capability it demonstrated.

DP Gap Analysis

Whether the DP documentation you hold is fit to rely on, and what it does not cover.

Next step

DP Assurance — let's scope it against your vessel.

Contact us Or email the technical team
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