Management of Change Isn't Just an ISM Buzzword: A Captain's Mini-Guide

Management of Change (MoC) gets treated as an ISM Code formality that only applies to major modifications — a new piece of equipment, a significant procedural rewrite. In practice, MoC is meant to apply to any planned change to equipment, procedure, personnel competency profile, or operating parameters that could introduce new risk, which is a much wider net than most crews actually apply it to.

The Failure Mode That Actually Happens

The common Master-level failure isn't skipping MoC on a major change — those tend to get flagged automatically. It's informal "workarounds" quietly becoming permanent practice without ever going through MoC, so the SMS risk assessment never catches up to what's actually being done on board. A temporary fix that's been "temporary" for eight months is exactly this failure, and it's more common than most SMS audits catch.

A Practical Test You Can Actually Use

Before deciding whether something needs a formal MoC, ask one question: would this change surprise the next Master or relief crew reading the SMS cold? If the answer is yes — if someone following the documented procedure would be caught out by how things are actually done — it needed an MoC, whether or not it feels like a small change.

Why This Sits With the Master

Company procedures document the MoC process, but it's the Master's day-to-day judgement that decides whether a given change gets routed through it or just becomes how we do things now. That judgement call, repeated correctly over months and years, is what keeps the SMS an accurate description of the ship rather than a historical document.

Test Your Knowledge

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Related Reading

• Paris MOU: Your SMS Is a Management Tool, Not a Compliance Binder