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According to MANA, DNV GL has stepped up its digitalisation efforts with the introduction of International Maritime Organization-compliant electronic class and statutory certificates for the vessels it classifies. It hopes this will reduce administration time and document-handling costs for ship owners, regulators, charterers and crew.

“Over the past several years, we have been leveraging digitalisation to improve the experience of our classification customers,” said DNV GL’s maritime chief executive Knut Ørbeck-Nilssen. “The roll out of electronic certificates is a significant step forward in our path towards modernising classification. Electronic certificates will smooth our customer’s interactions with class, allow stakeholders across the industry to capture value from digitalisation, and give us a platform for future improvements.”

To date, 45 flag state administrations have allowed the class society to issue statutory e-certificates on their behalf. DNV GL has worked with a number of ship owners and flag administrations on pilot projects before the official rollout and expects to receive more acceptances in future.

It said the certificates will be published on its customer portal right after the vessel’s onboard survey is published, allowing them to be accessed across the globe.

To ensure the certificates are valid and authentic, they incorporate a digital signature and a unique tracking number that can be verified online.

DNV GL will allow its clients to share the e-certificates with charterers, ports, flag administrations, insurers via temporary access codes to reduce administrative processes.

As part of the rollout, newbuilding vessels will get the e-certificates upon delivery and existing vessels will get them at their upcoming scheduled survey or audit.

“The electronic certificate regime offered by DNV GL has provided us with a unique advantage in the contemporary market, where leverage from digitalised high-end efficient work processes plays an integral role,” said Teekay Offshore fleet manager Morten Nygaard. One of Teekay’s vessels was used in the pilot projects.

“It is our intention to benefit from the new regime within the shortest possible time frames,” he added.

The moves comes after Japan’s ClassNK announced plans to introduce an e-certificate service for class and statutory documents to cut down the paperwork involved in the process on board vessels as well as onshore.

For now, the service is only available to Liberian-flagged vessels on ClassNK’s register.

In April this year, Singapore port authorities inked a memorandum of agreement with Denmark and Norway to push for wider adoption of e-certificates in the shipping industry.

The local authorities successfully ran a proof of concept trial in the use of digital class certificates versus hard copies on board four Singapore-flagged vessels. They intend to extend their use to the entire registered fleet.