Rules and technology developments, Energy Management and Safety Culture were the main themes of the Lloyd’s Register Hellenic Technical Committee (HTC) held on Monday 19 March onboard the historic Hellas Liberty at the port of Piraeus.

Apostolos Poulovassilis, Regional Marine Manager for Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA), stated in his keynote opening remarks: “The Lloyd’s Register HTC, one of the most significant and influential of our national technical committees worldwide, is adapting to the numerous and increasingly complex challenges facing shipping today and in the near future by adopting a more innovative and collaborative approach utilising the strong experience and capabilities of its individual members who are representing the Greek shipping technical community and providing vital feedback towards the evolution of Lloyd’s Register research, development and technology plan for the overall benefit of our industry”.

Following the opening remarks by the HTC Vice-Chairman Stavros Hatzigrigoris, Peter Thompson, LR’s Head of Hull Structures, delivered an update on Harmonised Common Structural Rules (HCSR) providing an overview of the current situation and the future developments.

During his presentation titled “Engineering Technology Developments – what’s new” Ed Fort, LR’s Head of Engineering Systems, talked about the “technology revolution” and the need for more sophisticated engineering systems to enhance safety and operational performance. “Lloyd’s Register is striving to support the shipping industry with tomorrow’s energy efficiency and safety related challenges through sturdier rules and standards in designs and materials. Technology needs to be at the heart of solutions to these challenges”, commented Theodosis Stamatellos, LR Marine Country Manager for Greece.

In a session led by Dimitris Simakis, LR’s Health & Safety Manager for Greece East Med & Africa, a “Safety Culture Maturity Model” was outlined and a group exercise took place aiming to introduce a method used for assessing current levels of safety culture maturity and involving all members of the HTC to help identify practical and realistic actions which will move safety culture maturity within their operations to the next level.

Stamatis Fradelos, Piraeus Design Support Office Senior Surveyor, focused on the Energy front and presented all the recent developments and changes in SEEMP and EEDI further to the results of IMO’s 63rd session of Marine Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC).

This session of the HTC closed with Ioannis Iakovou, EMEA Marine Management Systems Manager, who made an introduction on the forthcoming Marine Management Systems Sub-Committee and the key issues this is going to be addressing.