I would like to invite you to attend the 1 year anniversary conference in Hamburg on April 28th for Shipdex, a new electronic standard for shipboard technical documentation.
 Giancarlo Coletta
We founded Shipdex because we were frustrated that new vessels today still come delivered with a shelf of paper documentation – it is so much effort to get it onto ships, digitise it so it can be loaded into software, and manage the paper. Electronic documentation is so much easier to retrieve, update and manage – and potentially makes life much easier and much safer for our seafarers.
 
Together with InterShip Navigation we were purchasing 100 new vessels, and thought it was a good opportunity to encourage our shipyards and equipment suppliers to provide the documentation electronically.
 
The first step was developing a new standard – so we asked SpecTec, a maritime software company, to develop a version of S1000D, the electronic documentation standard used on navy vessels and aviation, which was suitable for use in commercial maritime.
 
We have had pilot projects running over the past year with MAN, Alfa Laval and MacGREGOR creating electronic documentation, and will shortly run a pilot project to see if we can incorporate their data into our shipboard systems.
 
It is now time for more shipping companies, equipment suppliers, classification societies and software companies to get involved in Shipdex – and a good start is for you to attend our 1 year anniversary conference, organised by Digital Ship, in Hamburg on April 28th.