U.S. Coast Guard Commercial Vessel Compliance Office issues Mission Management System Work Instruction

The following is the purpose-summary from a work instruction issued by the U.S. Coast Guard. The complete document is available online.

This work instruction sets forth guidance for assessing the effectiveness of a company's Safety Management System (SMS) on U.S.-flagged vessels through the following processes:

• Evaluation of materiel deficiencies for potential SMS process failures;
• Evaluation of SMS documentation (certificates, logs, maintenance records, etc.);
• Compliance options following objective evidence of an SMS failure; and
• Coast Guard oversight of SMS activities performed by Recognized Organizations (RO) and Third-Party Organizations (TPO).