RightShip Greece Forum 2026: Advancing RightShip Inspections

Global shipping is operating under increasing assurance pressure. Charterers, terminals, regulators, insurers, and operators are all seeking greater visibility into vessel performance and operational risk — while crews and managers continue to absorb the growing weight of inspections, questionnaires, reporting obligations, and closeout requirements.

The challenge explored during this session was not whether inspections remain necessary, but how assurance systems can evolve in ways that improve safety outcomes without creating unnecessary friction across the industry.

The session opened with an address from Christopher Saunders, Chief Maritime Officer at RightShip, who outlined the thinking behind RightShip’s evolving inspection framework and the broader shift toward more consistent, proportionate, and operationally realistic assurance practices.

Moderated by Capt. Sachin Singh, Executive Director, Customer Value and Solutions at RightShip, the panel discussion then brought together operational and inspection leadership from RightShip:

• Christopher Saunders, Chief Maritime Officer, RightShip
• Darren Ryan, Chief Operating Officer, RightShip

Across the discussion, the panel examined how inspections are changing in response to increasing industry expectations around transparency, consistency, usability, and trust — while also acknowledging the operational realities faced onboard vessels and ashore.

Rebalancing inspections around operational risk

A consistent message throughout the session was that assurance systems need to become more focused on the risks that genuinely matter.

In his opening remarks, Christopher Saunders acknowledged that parts of today’s inspection environment can feel overly administrative, particularly where effort does not always align with the severity of risk being addressed. He stressed, however, that the answer is not fewer standards or weaker oversight, but “better alignment between how the system is designed and how it is experienced in practice.”

That thinking sits behind several of the changes RightShip discussed during the session, particularly around inspection closeouts. Mandatory closeout requirements will increasingly focus on high- and medium-severity findings, with low-severity findings no longer requiring the same formal closeout process.

Christopher Saunders described this as one of the changes likely to have the most immediate operational impact, particularly for crews and superintendents managing the administrative workload following inspections. Darren Ryan reinforced that point, noting that low-severity observations are still expected to feed into internal continuous improvement processes, but that applying identical reporting effort across every finding does not necessarily strengthen safety outcomes.

The broader discussion reflected a wider industry tension: as assurance expectations expand, operators are increasingly seeking systems that remain rigorous while also recognising the practical realities onboard vessels — including workload pressures, fatigue, limited preparation windows, and competing operational demands.

Consistency depends on structure — not just intent

Another major theme throughout the session was consistency, particularly around how inspection findings are interpreted and applied.

Christopher Saunders outlined RightShip’s work to extend AI-supported severity classification models into inspections, building on approaches already used within PSC analysis. The objective, he explained, is not to replace professional judgement, but to create more structured reference points that reduce unnecessary variation between inspections and improve predictability for operators.

Darren Ryan expanded on this during the panel discussion, emphasising that experienced mariners and engineers remain central to all review processes. AI-supported models are being used to improve alignment and streamline assessment workflows, while human reviewers continue to validate outcomes and provide oversight.

The discussion also highlighted that consistency is not simply a technology challenge. It relies heavily on inspector training, accreditation, auditing, and governance processes.

Darren Ryan detailed the scale of RightShip’s inspector network and quality assurance framework, including structured examinations, ongoing auditing, and review mechanisms designed to identify subjective or unsupported findings. He also acknowledged that consistency remains an ongoing process rather than a finished outcome, noting that feedback from operators continues to play an important role in improving inspection quality over time.

That emphasis on predictability and fairness was closely linked to the session’s broader focus on trust. Christopher Saunders observed that inspections only work when stakeholders trust both the process and the consistency with which standards are applied.

Shared assurance remains an industry-wide challenge

The discussion also returned repeatedly to the issue of duplication across the wider assurance ecosystem.

Crews today often experience multiple inspections, repeated questionnaires, overlapping data requests, and different assurance frameworks serving similar purposes across charterers, ports, terminals, and other stakeholders. Darren Ryan described this as one of the clearest areas where the industry still has opportunities to reduce unnecessary burden.

He noted that one of the longer-term goals should be to enable a single inspection intervention to satisfy multiple assurance needs across the supply chain, thereby reducing the frequency of onboard disruptions while maintaining strong visibility into operational risk.

Christopher Saunders acknowledged, however, that achieving greater alignment across inspection regimes is complex. Different stakeholders approach assurance from different operational priorities, and while standardisation is widely discussed, practical implementation requires sustained collaboration and commitment across the industry.

The panel reflected cautiously optimistic views around the progress being made through industry dialogue, particularly around inspection sharing and broader discussions on standardisation. But participants also recognised that meaningful alignment will depend not only on technology, but on stakeholders being willing to trust and rely on shared assurance frameworks rather than continually recreating them independently.

Transparency requires confidence in how information is used

Another important theme was the relationship between transparency and trust.

The panel explored how the value of inspection data depends not only on visibility, but also on confidence in how that information is interpreted and applied. Christopher Saunders noted that repeated inspections are often driven by concerns around recency and confidence degradation over time, rather than an absence of information altogether.

That challenge is partly shaping RightShip’s work toward more continuous and shared assurance models, including improvements to inspection report sharing and ongoing digital assurance pilots designed to provide better visibility of vessel readiness between inspections.

At the same time, the discussion recognised that transparency also creates responsibilities. Christopher Saunders reflected that not every stakeholder necessarily requires access to full inspection reports, and that trust depends on ensuring information is used proportionately and responsibly within decision-making processes.

The panel also addressed governance and integrity directly, including questions around inspector accreditation, audit processes, and anti-corruption measures. Darren Ryan confirmed that RightShip maintains a zero-tolerance position on coercion or inducement involving inspectors, while Christopher Saunders highlighted ongoing collaboration with the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) to strengthen broader industry awareness and engagement on the issue.

Looking ahead

One of the clearest themes emerging from the session was that the future of inspections is likely to depend less on increasing oversight volume, and more on improving the quality, consistency, and usability of assurance itself.

The discussion reinforced that stronger safety outcomes require systems that operators, charterers, inspectors, and crews can all trust — not only in principle, but in operational practice.

It also highlighted that reducing unnecessary burden does not mean lowering standards. Rather, the direction of travel is toward more risk-based assurance, clearer alignment across stakeholders, and greater confidence in how inspection insights are shared and applied across the industry.

Watch the full session to hear the discussion on how RightShip inspections are evolving — and what a higher-trust, lower-friction assurance model could look like across global shipping.

This article was generated with the assistance of AI and may contain inaccuracies.