Saturday Routines is a weekend plan for seafarers at ship. Wait, it’s not a plan for party or celebration. It’s a plan for maintenance of ship’s important machineries like CO₂ system, Bilge alarms testing, Emergency generator checks etc. Actually some important machineries are advised to do checks and maintenance on weekly basis for better operation in daily use as well as in emergency.
It’s a subset of Safety Management System (SMS). It’s nothing but a practice of Planned Maintenance System (PMS). It is not compulsion by maritime regulations, it is a traditional practice for weekly maintenance. Sometimes it is also done on friday according to convenance of companies and engineers.
Planned maintenance
It’s also called as Routine Maintenance or Preventive Maintenance. It is managed through Planned Maintenance System (PMS), which is maintained by on-board officers as well as offshore staffs. This is carried out at regular intervals as prescribed by makers irrespective of condition of machinery. Saturday routines is a part of routine maintenance for some pivotal equipment or machinery.
Now you may ask that what is the need of saturday routines?
It is all about maintenance of important machinery and their safety features. And its maintenance keeps high value for safe and efficient operation of ships. Regular maintenance favours the life and output of the machinery.
There are certain machineries and system which is maintained and recorded under this routine maintenance. All these machineries are divided for responsible engineer officers according to maintenance and safety level. Here is a list of machineries and system with assigned responsible officers: (2E : Second Engineer Officer, 3E : Third Engineer Officer, 4E : Fourth Engineer Officer, ETO : Electro-Technical Officer)
Saturday Routines at Ship
- CO₂ System: 2E and ETO
- Main Engine Alarms and Trips: 2E and ETO
- Quick Closing Valves: 2E and ETO
- Oily Water Separator: 2E and ETO
- Emergency Steering: 2E and ETO
- Sewage System: 2E and ETO
- Lifeboat and Rescue boat Engine: 3E
- Emergency Air Compressor: 4E
- Emergency Fire Pump: 4E
- Boiler Trips and Alarms: 4E and ETO
- HFO, LO and DO Purifier Alarms: 4E
- Blower Flaps and Funnel Flaps: 4E
- Emergency Bilge Suction: 4E
- Fire Extinguishers, Fire hoses, Fire hydrants and EEBD: 4E
- Auxiliary Engine Alarms and Trips: 3E and ETO
- Smoke Detectors: ETO
- Cold Room Alarms: ETO
- Emergency Generator: ETO
- Main Switchboard: ETO
- Bilge Alarms: ETO
- Leakage Test: ETO
Some machineries may be checked or inspected once in a month or fortnightly also. Here the list of machineries for saturday routines may be more or less, depending upon the type of the ship i.e. in Tanker ships, there are some additional checks. But above listed machineries are common for all types of ship.
Inspection: Generally, the record of Saturday Routine maintenance is checked and inspected by Surveyor and Port State Control (PSC). Faults in records or maintenance of dedicated machinery can be the reason for detention.
