NATO ANEP-77 PART 3 PDF

Purpose of the Code

Requirements for this Section are contained in Part 1.

Recognising that there is no naval body that is equivalent to IMO and that naval ships are not embraced by the work of IMO, NATO nations and their partners established a NATO Specialist Team to develop a “Naval Ship Code” (the Code). When the Specialist Team was disbanded, the International Naval Safety Association (INSA) was formed to manage the Code and to continue its development.

This Chapter and the subsequent Chapters in Part 3 describe:

• How the Code is constructed and the principles used in its design;

• How the Code is managed by the INSA and published by NATO;

• The background to, and how to use, each of the Code’s chapters and parts.

Introduction – The Naval Ship Code

The Naval Ship Code provides a goal based framework that enables ships and other surface vessels to be certified within a navy’s safety management system as being safe to operate. It includes processes and potential solutions for the defined technical areas which can be applied to any naval submarine, within the context of its operational requirements.

The need for this activity has arisen from changing aspects of a navy’s statutory obligations both in direct relationship to international legislation, such as IMO Conventions and national legislation such as Workplace Health and Safety (or equivalent). Navies have also developed an understanding that having a robust safety management process is a force multiplier in terms of crews having confidence in their equipment and through the use of an independent process of verification outside the responsibility of the asset owner they are able to show a robust and transparent process.

Navies have also recognised that the safety of naval ships has important differences from the concept applied to vessels operated commercially and direct application of the IMO Conventions and statutory processes is not necessarily an appropriate solution.

The Code has been derived from SOLAS which is organised under a number of Chapters, each one dealing with a particular technical area of a ship, ie structural strength, stability, machinery systems; etc. The Code has replicated this arrangement, but a number of Areas have been excluded as they are not normally within the scope of a Naval Administration.

The ‘Goal for the Code’ can be stated as being:

“an internationally accepted framework for naval surface ship safety based on and derived from IMO conventions and resolutions that embraces the majority of ships operated by Navies.”

One of the key objectives of the navies who developed the Code, was to provide identification of key hazard areas of a naval ship, but not to prescribe specific design solutions. This was intended to stimulate innovation with new designs. It had been recognised that civilian safety management practice is moving to a Goal Based philosophy where hazards are aggregated into a higher level Goal that a designer needs to address. Determining if this solution is acceptable from a safety perspective would normally either be done by demonstrating it complies with a contemporary and appropriate technical standard, or to develop a robust safety argument using Risk Assessment techniques. Hence SOLAS was reviewed in depth to identify the underlying hazards it was seeking to address and then to capture this as a set of Goals, Functional Objectives and Performance Requirements.

The Code is therefore set out as a number of Technical Areas (chapters II to X), which each have a unique Goal. This Goal is then broken down into component Functional Objectives and Performance Requirements. By a process of demonstrating that each Performance Requirement has been satisfied, through a process of compliance with a technical standard, the argument can be made that the higher level Goals are satisfied.

Because a naval ship has a far wider Concept of Operations than a commercially operated vessel, it is expected to operate in harsher conditions, both with regard to the operating environment and the type of external risks (military operations) it may experience. As not all naval vessels have to operate across the full spectrum of conditions, the Code has been limited to Peacetime and Maritime Security scenarios, for those situations that are considered ‘foreseeable’. This excludes any combat roles, or where military attack is expected. If the vessel needs to operate under these scenarios, then the Naval Administration will advise on additional criteria to be applied. For the sake of clarity, the extreme conditions that a naval vessel may be expected to operate under have been separated into those associated with

• the maritime environment - wind speed and sea state (defined as Extreme Conditions);

• military attack (defined as Extreme Threat Conditions).

Naval ships have a number of fundamentally different operating principles due to their role within the maritime defence of a nation. Direct application of the safety regulatory principles applied to commercial ships is therefore normally inappropriate.

Annex B provides a more comprehensive explanation of the differences that are relevant and has provided guidance in both the development of the NSC and the manner in which a Naval Administration will adopt and apply the Code.

The scenarios across which a naval ship may need to operate within are be shown in Figure P3-0-1. They are summarised also in Table P3-0-1.