Inshore Systems’ Mike Harrison believes that there are a number of steps that could be taken to reach a more open, honest and level playing field to compare the quality and performance of fenders. These include:<\/p>\n
(a) Manufacturers could collaborate to establish an independent and transparent federation or association to provide end users with advice on standards and testing procedures;<\/p>\n
(b) End users should routinely employ competent third parties to witness and report on fender production and testing during the manufacturing stage;<\/p>\n
(c) \u201cType Approval\u201d certification should only be issued by a competent third party and should apply to the factory where fenders are produced (non-transferrable) with period re-verification, every 3~5 years;<\/p>\n
(d) Ideally \u201cType Approval\u201d tests should be conducted externally at a suitably equipped laboratory or university;<\/p>\n
(e) Manufacturers should declare the factory name and location where the major components of their system (especially rubber, steel fabrications and face pads) are actually made;<\/p>\n
(f) Bought in fenders should be subject to the same testing and certification as a manufacturer\u2019s own products or different standards declared accordingly;<\/p>\n
(g) Standards should apply to fixed fenders as well as to foam and pneumatic fenders in a manufacturer\u2019s range.<\/p>\n
Adds Mr Harrison: “I would like to be clear that in my experience the great majority of fender failures are unrelated to rubber manufacture. Most failures are due to one or multiple causes including poor design, inadequate shear restraint, low grade polyethylene face pads, substandard steel fabrications and a poor or non-existent inspection and maintenance programme. Very few are caused by over-speed or over-angle approaches and allisions.<\/p>\n
“Fenders are the third line of defence after predicting what events could happen (design), and preventing an incident (monitoring). Ignoring the first two inevitably puts extra demands on the fenders and higher risk. Better use of modern design techniques and technologies for monitoring berthing ships represent a safer and cheaper way of predicting and preventing incidents.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The fender debate is heating up, as industry experts clash on the quality of products available in todays port industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equipment","category-products-services"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3676"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}