Publication of ‘ECDIS Procedures Guide’

The procedures contained in the ‘ECDIS Procedures Guide’ are recommendations, designed to accompany a ship’s safety management system (SMS), regarding the use of ECDIS for navigation for voyage planning and while at sea.

Regulations require navigating officers to adopt and adhere to new watchkeeping routines and practices to support the use of ECDIS. The ‘ECDIS Procedures Guide’ contains a practical and concise framework, with supporting information and checklists, to help companies implement best practice in the use of ECDIS.

The ‘ECDIS Procedures Guide’ contains information on:

  • Policy
  • training
  • use of ECDIS for navigation
  • use of ECDIS on Passage
  • route planning
  • chart updating
  • administration and records.

Examples include type-specific course content and log examples for manual corrections, spot checks and chart updates.

When asked how the Guide came to be written, Mal Instone, Director at ECDIS Ltd and author of the ‘ECDIS Procedures Guide’ explained that:

Many of the ship owners who were early adopters of ECDIS approached ECDIS Ltd directly, requesting our assistance to help them develop and implement robust operating procedures for use onboard their ships and appropriate to the make of ECDIS in use”.

Mark Broster, Managing Director of ECDIS Ltd, went on to explain that

we all realised that the natural next step was to develop a generic set of procedures that could be used by all merchant vessels and we identified Witherbys as the most appropriate publisher to help us with the project.”

The ‘ECDIS Procedures Guide’ is available from Witherby Seamanship at www.witherbyseamanship.com and at all good maritime chart and book stockists.

Written by:        ECDIS Ltd
Published by:    Witherby Seamanship International Ltd
Book £75          ISBN 978-1-85609-535-8
eBook £75         eISBN                                                   (eBook excludes any applicable taxes)

ECDIS entry in to force requirements:
The regulations concerning the fitting of ECDIS onboard ship commences its entry in to force phase from
1 July 2012, where a ship may navigate with an approved ECDIS as the primary means of navigation if:

  • Sufficient official data, adequate for the intended passage, is installed (ENC and RNC)
  • the installed ECDIS is type-approved
  • a second type-approved ECDIS is installed as a backup (or there is a full paper chart back-up)
  • adequate generic and type-specific training has taken place
  • any additional requirements laid down the by flag State are fulfilled.

About Witherbys:

Witherby Seamanship is an independent publisher of regulatory and technical books for the marine industry, publishing for bodies such as OCIMF, SIGTTO and ITOPF as well as suite of its own titles for both deck and engineering operations.

Witherby Seamanship has also been involved in producing, protecting and publishing eBooks for more than 10 years, and it is calculated that there are over 250,000 Witherby Seamanship eBooks in use today.

In 2011, Witherby Seamanship was appointed as digital publisher of the official electronic versions of Codes and Conventions for IMO.

About ECDIS Ltd:

The team at ECDIS Ltd are widely considered to rank amongst the world experts in ECDIS, providing subject matter expertise to manufacturers, organisations and technical publishers. They are fully conversant with both traditional and digital navigation and specialise in providing Flag State approved IMO model ECDIS courses and accredited Equipment Specific training on an extensive number of systems, delivering static training in their state of the art Training Centre near Southampton (UK) and portable training at a location of the customer’s choosing.

For further information contact:

Witherby Publishing Group
 
Clare Barron
Sales & Marketing
Witherby Publishing Group
Tel:   +44 (0)1506 463 227
clare@emailws.com
ECDIS Ltd
Amy Shelton
Marketing Manager
ECDIS Ltd 
Tel: +44 (0)1489 559 677
shelton@ecdis.org