DP Incident Investigation

Independent root cause investigation of a DP incident or undesired event

Normative anchor

IMCA M 117 Rev 3.3 Appendix H · IMCA DP Station Keeping Event Reporting Scheme

Answers to

Company DP Authority · DPA

Charging unit

Per event

Primary output

Independent investigation report with root cause and corrective actions

An external investigation of a DP incident or undesired event, carried out by someone with no stake in the answer. The charterer's assurance regime requires exactly this before an event of either class can be formally closed — because a company investigating its own event is grading its own homework.

In scope

Classification of the event against IMCA M 117 Appendix H — DP incident, DP undesired event, or neither. The classification drives everything downstream and is frequently got wrong.
Reconstruction from DP data logs, alarm history, event printer and the vessel management system, cross-read against the FMEA in force.
Interviews with the bridge and engine watch on duty, conducted to establish sequence rather than fault.
Root cause analysis to the technical, organisational and human factors that permitted the event.
Assessment of whether the failure was one the FMEA predicted, one it missed, or one it predicted and the operation had drifted away from.
Review of the corrective actions proposed, and verification of their effectiveness where the scope extends past closure.
Anonymised lessons-learned brief suitable for fleet distribution.

Not in scope

Apportioning individual blame. We establish what happened and why; disciplinary process is the operator's and we take no part in it.
Representation in litigation, arbitration or insurance proceedings.
Engineering the corrective action. We identify what must change; the design belongs to the yard or the OEM.
Investigating an event on a vessel whose FMEA or trials we produced, unless the client accepts a declared conflict in writing.

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

Deliverables

What you receive

Investigation report with the event sequence, the root cause and the contributing factors, each traced to evidence.
Event classification against IMCA M 117 Appendix H, with the reasoning.
Corrective action plan with the owner and period for each item.
Independent opinion suitable for submission to the charterer as the external review their regime requires.
Anonymised fleet brief.

Scoping

What drives the effort

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

Event severity and classification
Whether attendance on board is required
Volume of log data
Number of people interviewed
Whether effectiveness verification is included

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

Data degrades fast. Alarm buffers overwrite, people rotate off and memory reorders sequence — the investigation that starts within days is a different investigation from the one that starts within months.

DP Incident Investigation

In scope

Not in scope

What you receive

What drives the effort

What usually goes with it

DP Gap Analysis

DP Assurance

DP FMEA

DP Incident Investigation — let's scope it against your vessel.