US Coast Guard introduces new scorecard for cruise inspections
The agency has issued a new scorecard grading system for cruise ship inspections.
By Michael McGrady, Maritime Direct Americas & Pacific Correspondent
FORT LAUDERDALE — The United States Coast Guard and its Cruise Ship National Center of Expertise recently issued a new cruise ship inspection standard, per a brand new ‘scorecard’ grading system.
“We recognized how well the scoring system for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Programs incentivized positive performance from the ships crews,” notes Brad Schoenwald, the senior marine inspector at the Coast Guard’s cruise ship center.
“Their score brought awareness to the public and, more importantly, gave the ships’ crew an identifiable result of how well they were doing to maintain compliance,” notes Schoenwald, via reporting offered by trade journal Cruise Industry News.
Schoenwald said: “These scores are incorporated as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) within the major cruise lines’ corporate performance measurements. In developing the Cruise Ship Scorecard, however, the main goal was to provide a measurement of how well Coast Guard examiners performed while completing examinations.”
The so-called Cruise Ship Scorecard Project was selected by the US Coast Guard’s Research and Development Center to develop through the center’s Research and Development Test and Evaluation Program.
Development for the program began in October of 2018, and the final order was said to be have completed last March.
Now the order is entering force.
