Domestic Vessel Safety Management System Documentation
The operational Safety Management System for an Australian domestic commercial vessel — vessel register, operating areas and certificates; the SMS with its sections, revisions and statements of authority; crew qualifications, training, induction and crewing assessment; fitness and fatigue management; hazards, risk assessments, controls and management of change; procedures, acknowledgements, emergency plans and drills; maintenance items, plans, work, defects and inspections; voyages, readiness, crew assignment, passenger counts and the vessel log; incidents, investigations and corrective actions; and assurance — audits, findings, the SMS review, controlled documents, evidence, consultation and notifications.
This section covers the Domestic Vessel Safety Management System application specifically. For how the interface works in general (lists, forms, navigation, deletion), see the Framework Guides above.
In This Section
- Application Overview — what the app models and why
- Quick Reference — menu map, demo codes and statuses
- System Diagram — the data model mapped, with an interactive pan/zoom viewer
The Application in One Paragraph
The Domestic Vessel Safety Management System runs the operating SMS for one commercial vessel end to end, from its authority to operate to the evidence that each voyage was safe. An operator and owner run a vessel approved for named operating areas and holding certificates — each certificate kept as a record distinct from its being verified and current. The Safety Management System sits over the vessel with its sections, revisions and statements of authority. People hold roles, qualifications, training and inductions, and a crewing assessment sets the minimum safe crew — but a crew assignment is deliberately separate from whether a person is qualified and fit for duty, which the fatigue plan, work/rest records, fitness-for-duty declarations and drug & alcohol policy govern. Hazards are assessed into risk assessments with controls, and any change runs through management of change. Procedures are documented and then separately acknowledged by crew; emergency plans are proven by drills. The vessel is kept seaworthy through maintenance items, plans and work, with defects raised (a documented repair is separate from its verification) and inspections run against templated items. A voyage proceeds only after a readiness assessment gates it; crew assignments, passenger counts and the vessel log record the execution. When something goes wrong, an incident is reported, then separately investigated, then separately actioned through corrective actions tracked to verification. Around that spine run audits and findings, the periodic SMS review (kept separate from the revision it may trigger), controlled documents, captured evidence, consultation records and the notification queue. The demo carries the pack's headline scenario end to end: a pre-departure fire pump test fails, a critical defect blocks departure, the suction hose is replaced and retested, evidence is attached, an independent verification is done, readiness is re-assessed to ready and the master approves departure.
Prototype — not legal or regulatory advice. Vessel class, service category, operating area, certificate conditions and exemptions must be validated for each operation. Grounded in Marine Order 504 (2024, commenced 1 June 2025) and the AMSA Guidelines/Templates for a Safety Management System.