Determined to make their reports as up-to-date and relevant as possible, the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) has put out a call for DP station keeping incidents in tandem with the publication of its 2005 report on the subject. The aim of this report is to help keep the DP fleet operational, safe and acceptable to authorities by feeding into improvements in designs, procedures and training, not only for IMCA member companies but for the whole DP fleet which is increasing so markedly at the moment with large numbers of new buildings of both marine construction and support vessels.

Looking back to 2005, the newly published report sets out the analysis of 36 dynamic positioning incidents from drilling, dive support, rov support, well operations, flotel, pipelay and offshore loading vessels. As in previous years, each incident has been categorised as a major loss of position (LOP1), minor loss of position (LOP2) or lost time incident (LTI).

The report on 2005 activity gives information on 15 LOP1, six LOP2 and 15 LTI incidents, with computers and thrusters continuing to feature as significant initiating triggers for these events. Data was provided on 29 vessels, an improvement on the previous year, but still a reduction from earlier years where between 35 and 40 vessels contributed. This gives an average of 1.2 reports per vessel, which is down on previous years of 1.5 for 2004; 1.42 for 2003 and 1.68 for 2002. The report provides incident trees for each occurrence. For future years, it is hoped to build on these reports by not only encouraging more reporting, but also by providing more feedback on the incidents.