Code of Safety for Special Purpose Ships – IMO

The Maritime Safety Committee, at its eighty-fourth session, revised the Code of Safety for Special Purpose Ships (SPS Code) adopted by resolution A.534(13) to bring it up to date with amendments to SOLAS and to extend the voluntary application of the revised Code to include training ships, whether or not covered by the application requirements of SOLAS.

The Code has been developed to provide an international standard of safety for special purpose ships of new construction, the application of which will facilitate the operation of such ships and result in a level of safety for the ships and their personnel equivalent to that required by the International Convention for the Safety at Life of Sea, 1974.

For the purposes of this Code, a special purpose ship is a ship of not less than 500 gross tonnage which carries more than 12 special personnel, i.e. persons who are especially needed for the particular operational duties of the ship and are carried in addition to those persons required for the normal navigation, engineering and maintenance of the ship or engaged to provide services for the persons carried on board.

Because special personnel are expected to be able-bodied with a fair knowledge of the layout of the ship and have received some training in safety procedures and the handling of the ship’s safety equipment, the special purpose ships on which they are carried need not be considered or treated as passenger ships.