LSA is life-saving appliances. FFE is fire-fighting equipment. Between them they cover most of what a deck officer walks round and signs for every week: the liferafts and the tender, the lifejackets and immersion suits, the EPIRB and the SARTs, the extinguishers, the fire main and hoses, the fixed systems, the breathing apparatus. The weekly and monthly checks on that equipment are not a company invention. They are written into SOLAS, and the record of them is one of the first things an inspector asks to see.
Where the weekly checks come from
SOLAS Chapter III, Regulation 20 is titled Operational readiness, maintenance and inspection, and paragraph 20.6 sets out what happens every week. Four things:
- A visual inspection of survival craft, rescue boats and launching appliances, to confirm they are ready for use. That includes the condition of the hooks, their attachment to the boat, and that the on-load release gear is properly and completely reset.
- All engines in lifeboats and rescue boats run for a total of not less than three minutes, provided the ambient temperature is above the minimum needed to start and run the engine. During the run it should be shown that the gearbox and gearbox train are engaging satisfactorily.
- On cargo ships, lifeboats other than free-fall lifeboats moved from their stowed position, with nobody aboard, as far as is needed to show the launching appliance works, if weather and sea conditions allow.
- The general emergency alarm tested.
The three minutes is the part crews most often get wrong, in both directions. It is a total, not three minutes per attempt, and it is conditional on ambient temperature — if it is too cold to start the engine safely, that is a legitimate entry in the log rather than a failed check.
The monthly inspection and the regulation 36 checklist
Paragraph 20.7 covers the month. Life-saving appliances, including lifeboat equipment, are inspected monthly to confirm they are complete and in good order, and the inspection is carried out using the checklist required by regulation 36.1. A report of the inspection goes in the log book.
That cross-reference matters, because it means the monthly checklist is not a blank sheet you design yourself. Regulation 36 requires the ship to carry instructions for onboard maintenance of life-saving appliances, and those instructions must include a checklist for use when carrying out the monthly inspections. In practice that checklist comes from the manufacturer's manuals and the ship's own safety management system, and an inspector who wants to test the monthly routine will ask to see the checklist first and the completed records second.
The fire side: SOLAS II-2/14
The fire-fighting half sits in a different chapter. SOLAS Chapter II-2, Regulation 14, also called Operational readiness and maintenance, requires that fire protection systems and appliances are kept in good order and ready for immediate use at all times while the ship is in service, and that the ship carries a maintenance plan. The plan is kept on board and has to be available for inspection whenever the Administration asks for it.
What goes in that plan is guided by IMO circulars rather than spelled out in the regulation — MSC.1/Circ.1432, as revised and supplemented, gives the minimum recommended maintenance and inspection intervals for fire protection systems and appliances, and is the usual basis for the onboard plan. One detail in those guidelines is worth knowing before an audit: some tasks may be carried out by competent crew members who have completed advanced fire-fighting training, and others must be done by specially trained personnel. The maintenance plan itself has to say which is which. A plan that does not distinguish them is a finding waiting to happen.
The weekly round, item by item
What follows is what a weekly LSA and FFE round on a large yacht typically covers. It is a starting point for building your own, not a substitute for it — the monthly inspection in particular has to be done against the checklist your vessel is required to hold under regulation 36.1, which comes from your manufacturers' manuals and your safety management system.
Life-saving, weekly:
- Liferafts — stowage and lashings secure, hydrostatic release unit in date and correctly rigged, painter made fast to the weak link, container undamaged, servicing label in date
- Rescue boat and tender — hull and fittings sound, fuel and battery state, engine run for not less than three minutes, gearbox engaging ahead and astern
- Launching appliances — davits, falls, sheaves and limit switches, hook condition and attachment, on-load release gear properly and completely reset
- Lifebuoys — correct number and stowage, self-igniting lights, smoke signals, buoyant lines, quick-release arrangements clear
- Lifejackets — accessible at every station, correct count including child and oversize, lights and whistles fitted, no perished webbing
- Immersion suits and TPAs — stowed at the right stations, zips and seals serviceable
- EPIRB and SARTs — battery and servicing dates, mounting bracket and HRU, no visible damage, not obstructed
- Pyrotechnics — in date, stowed dry and secure
- Embarkation arrangements — ladders, lighting, muster station signage legible and lit
- General emergency alarm and PA — both tested and audible throughout
Fire-fighting, weekly:
- Portable extinguishers — in their brackets, gauges reading in range, seals and tamper indicators intact, service labels in date
- Hydrants, hoses and nozzles — stowed at each station, couplings and washers sound, no perishing
- Fire pumps — main and emergency fire pump run, pressure achieved, isolating valves correctly set
- Fixed fire-fighting system — cylinder pressures and weights, release station secured and sealed, warning notices and alarms in place
- Detection panel — no standing faults, test function exercised, disabled zones logged with a reason
- Fire dampers, flaps and quick-closing valves — free to operate, linkages and markings clear
- Breathing apparatus — cylinder pressures, masks and harnesses, spare cylinders charged, fireman's outfits complete
- Fire doors and escape routes — closing freely, held-open devices releasing, routes and exits unobstructed
- Galley — extraction hood and duct clean, fire blanket in place, local suppression in date
Monthly, in addition: the full life-saving appliance inspection against the regulation 36.1 checklist, including the lifeboat and liferaft equipment inventories item by item, rations and water within date, and lights and batteries tested. The report of that inspection goes in the log book.
What is really a servicing date, not a check: liferaft and EPIRB servicing, extinguisher discharge testing, immersion suit pressure testing and breathing apparatus cylinder testing all belong to a shore contractor. Your weekly job on those is confirming the certificate is still in date and raising the renewal early enough that it does not expire in a shipyard period.
Who has to supervise
Weekly and monthly inspections, and routine maintenance carried out to the manufacturer's instructions, are done under the direct supervision of a senior officer. On a yacht that is usually the chief officer, or the second officer with the chief officer's name against the record. It is a small requirement that is easy to satisfy and easy to fail on paper: if the record shows only the deckhand who walked round, the supervision requirement is not evidenced, however carefully the check was actually done.
What the record has to show
A weekly or monthly LSA and FFE record earns its keep when it can answer four questions without anyone having to remember anything:
- What was checked, item by item, against the checklist the ship is required to hold
- When — the date, and enough of the time to show the interval was actually kept
- Who completed it, and which senior officer supervised
- What was wrong, and what happened next
The last one is where paper records usually break down. A tick sheet records that the check happened. It rarely records that the number four extinguisher was found under-pressure, who was told, when it was replaced, and who signed it off. That chain is the part an auditor follows, and it is the part the ISM Code cares about — see ISM maintenance and inspection requirements for why a defect has to become a job rather than a note.
Doing the round on a phone
The Muster App keeps these as checklists built in the admin and completed where the work is: the crew member runs the weekly round on their own phone in the space being checked, or on the iPad on the bulkhead, and marks each item pass, N/A or fail, with a note or a photograph on any of it. Items that matter are flagged critical, so a failed critical item is named in the notification the moment the check is submitted rather than surfacing at the end of the month.
A failed or flagged item becomes a Worklist item carrying the check it came from, so it gets an owner and a due date instead of sitting in a log. Every submitted check records who completed it and when, and exports as a PDF, one check per page. The checklists page covers how the whole thing is put together.
What to read next
For the wider list a large yacht keeps, see the superyacht safety checklist. For the drill side of Chapter III rather than the equipment side, SOLAS and ISM drill requirements covers what the ship must run and record for musters and drills, and the muster software covers how the list, the roll call and the record work on board.