The importance of the technical office in a maritime transport company
Within the most varied diversity of Shipping Companies worldwide and the different means of Maritime Transport. Each company has diverse offices in charge of carrying out different types of work in the chain of its organizational chart.
We find, for example, the offices of Human Resources, Accounting, and Operations, and one of the most important, without a doubt, without minimizing the importance of the others, is the Technical Office, which we are going to explain in broad strokes its function in the organizational chart.
In general, the technical office is led by the Technical Manager.
According to the size of the company’s fleet and the type of ships it has, it is the number of Super Technical Superintendents the office has. In some cases, the number of vessels in charge of each Technical Superintendent exceeds five units. Each superintendent’s Operations or Technical office they are the link between the ship and the company. Sometimes, the Operations Superintendent is called DPA (Direct Person Ashore).
But going back to the technical office and its functions are to keep the fleet in optimal conditions following the rules of the Classification Society, Ship Registry (State in which the ship is Flagged), and all the new laws imposed by international organizations such as IMO to that ships are safe for the crew and the environment.
Within this function, the technical office organizes the inspections or surveys of the ship’s Class Society in conjunction with the Captains and Chief Engineers without interfering with the ships’ operations.
On the other hand, it oversees budgeting and organizing the different repair periods in shipyards and monitoring their work once the docking period has begun.
The Technical Office constantly works with the Operations and Purchasing Office to provide the materials and spare parts to the on-board Engineering department.
But undoubtedly one of the most important jobs is the technical support of the technical superintendents to the engineering department when there are significant problems to be solved. The technical office has all the construction drawings for the ship and machinery installed on board. With this information, the superintendents and the Chief Engineers exchange knowledge to solve the most diverse types of problems and, in some cases, highly complex ones.
The technical superintendents also have the power, together with the Technical Manager, to send external or specialized help to solve these problems with different equipment on the ship.
Any vessel needs external technical and logistical support so that the crews can carry out the maintenance and operational work of the vessel for which it was designed.
Southern Ocean Marine Engineering Solutions offers technical support and experience for all shipping companies, especially for the Mega Yacht industry, with Technical Superintendents certified by Lloyd’s Register.
