Best Practice in Maritime: More Than a Buzzword
Ask any port state control officer what separates a clean inspection from a detention, and the answer rarely comes down to a single regulation. It comes down to best practice — the accumulated, field-tested know-how that sits above the legal minimum and defines how a well-run ship or energy asset actually operates. In maritime and energy circles, best practice is both a technical benchmark and a cultural signal, and understanding it matters as much as knowing the rules themselves.
What Best Practice Actually Means at Sea
Regulations set the floor. The SOLAS and MARPOL conventions, flag state requirements, and class society rules establish the baseline that every vessel must meet to legally trade. Best practice occupies the space above that floor — the operational habits, maintenance routines, and risk-management approaches that experienced operators adopt because they work, not because a statute demands it. It is codified through industry bodies rather than legislators: BIMCO contract clauses, OCIMF’s Tanker Management and Self Assessment (TMSA) program, the Oil Companies International Marine Forum’s vetting criteria, and class society guidance notes all function as repositories of best practice.
The mechanism behind best practice is essentially collective learning. Incident investigations, near-miss reporting databases, insurance claims data, and P&I club loss-prevention bulletins feed into a continuous feedback loop. When a mooring line failure or an engine room fire reveals a gap in procedure, the lesson gets distilled into guidance that spreads across fleets. Classification societies like DNV, Lloyd’s Register, and ABS publish technical papers that often become de facto best practice long before any regulator catches up. This is why best practice tends to move faster than formal rulemaking — it is shaped by operators and insurers who have direct financial exposure to getting things wrong.
Where Best Practice Shows Up in Daily Operations
Nowhere is best practice more visible than in ballast water management, bunkering operations, and enclosed space entry procedures. Long before the Ballast Water Management Convention entered into force, forward-thinking operators were already piloting exchange and treatment protocols based on industry guidance, positioning themselves ahead of compliance deadlines. The same pattern played out with low-sulphur fuel transitions ahead of IMO 2020, where best practice around fuel compatibility testing and tank cleaning saved operators from costly engine damage that caught less-prepared fleets off guard.
In the energy sector, best practice governs everything from dynamic positioning operations on offshore support vessels to permit-to-work systems on FPSOs. The International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) publishes extensive guidance on diving operations, subsea lifting, and DP incident reporting that has become the accepted standard even where no specific law mandates it. Charterers increasingly use adherence to these voluntary frameworks as a commercial filter — a vessel that cannot demonstrate alignment with recognized best practice simply does not get fixed, regardless of its flag state paperwork being in order.
Why the Gap Between Rules and Best Practice Matters
The tension between regulatory compliance and best practice creates real commercial consequences. Oil majors vetting tankers through programs like RightShip or SIRE do not just check boxes against SOLAS requirements; they assess whether a vessel’s safety management system reflects genuinely embedded best practice or merely paper compliance. Insurers price risk accordingly, and underwriters increasingly ask whether a shipowner’s procedures match recognized industry guidance, not just statutory minimums.
This gap has grown more consequential as decarbonization accelerates. The IMO’s greenhouse gas strategy sets targets, but the actual pathway — slow steaming protocols, hull cleaning schedules, voyage optimization software, alternative fuel handling — is being defined through best practice guidance from bodies like the Getting to Zero Coalition and classification societies well ahead of binding rules. Operators who wait for regulation to catch up often find themselves scrambling, while those who track best practice early gain both efficiency gains and reputational advantage with charterers and financiers increasingly scrutinizing ESG performance.
Cybersecurity follows a similar trajectory. BIMCO’s guidelines on cyber security onboard ships became the reference standard for an entire industry before any binding international convention addressed the issue directly, illustrating how quickly best practice can fill a regulatory vacuum.
Best practice will keep outpacing formal regulation, simply because the industry learns faster than lawmakers legislate. For owners, operators, and crews, treating it as optional guidance rather than operational necessity is an increasingly risky bet — commercially, legally, and in terms of safety outcomes that no rulebook alone can guarantee.
