An extraordinary Council meeting in IACS (International Association of Classification Societies) yesterday agreed that on January 1, 2006 all IACS societies will issue new Common Rules for the Scantlings of Tankers and for Bulk Carriers.

Says DNV’s member in the IACS Council, Terje Staalstrøm: “The Council has decided that all IACS societies will base their new tanker rules on the JTP-rules. DNV will now review the bulk carrier rules developed by JBP to see whether these should be the basis for the new DNV rules.”

DNV has, together with ABS and LR, for almost 3 years worked on the joint development of new rules for tanker structure – the JTP-project. For the last year, another IACS group, called JBP, has worked on the development of new rules for bulk carrier structure. The draft rules from both projects have been on public hearing since July this year and more than 3000 comments have been received for the tanker rules alone. These comments are now being considered and final drafts of the rules are under preparation.

Not harmonised yet
As the new rules have been developed by two distinct groups of classification societies, the two sets of rules will at this stage not be technically harmonised. There will be differences in approach to e.g. external loads, fatigue calculations and global strength analysis. “To meet the expectations of both the industry and IMO, we cannot however postpone the publication of the new rules until they are fully harmonised. That is a long-term process,” says Terje Staalstrøm.

DNV’s Steering Group member in the JTP-project is Rune Torhaug. Both Torhaug and Staalstrøm see the decision in IACS Council as an important strategic victory for DNV: “We believe in JTP that our technical platform reflects state-of-the-art in ship design technology and experience. Our new rules will give the industry the safe and robust tankers they are asking for. The challenge now is to ensure that the implementation is consistent throughout IACS.”