Bridge Operations (or Operational) Quality Assurance (BOQA; pronounced ) is a methodology utilised in shipping and which originates from the similar FOQA/FDM (Flight Operations Quality Assurance/Flight Data Monitoring) concept in aviation. BOQA is a methodology with which ship owners/operators, ship Captains, and other associated shipping stakeholders can automatically and systematically monitor, track, trend and analyse operational quality of (seagoing) vessels. The main target with BOQA is to provide a non-punitive platform for proactive analysis of vessel data to enable the enhancement of maritime safety . The BOQA methodology can be used in both conventional manned ships and in autonomous or unmanned vessels providing that adequate data sources are available.
History
The original template for BOQA was laid out when Royal Caribbean approached Aerobytes Limited (a market leader in FOQA) to collaborate to provide a similar product for the maritime industry. https://www.aerobytes.co.uk/boqa/. Discussions were held as to what breaches of performance should be detected and two recorders were installed on RCCL vessels and discussions were also held with Carnival group to develop the BOQA concept. Aerobytes decided to focus on its core business of aviation and RCCL and Carnival went on to develop their own systems along with a few other companies who saw the potential.
At present BOQA is not mandated and therefore there are no strict rules as to what an effective BOQA system should contain, but once the enormous potential is realised it is entirely possible that might change.
Description
BOQA is best developed as a non-punitive company-internal methodology or process, which has the overall target of assisting the ship Captain and the ship operator to maintain a high level of safety and operational quality.
BOQA has been described as:
A system which delivers 24/7 electronic monitoring and electronic alarms when set operational parameters are deviated from During normal operations, BOQA will collect and analyse digital operational data direct from ships operation equipment BOQA data is unique because it can provide objective information that is not available through other methods A BOQA program can identify operational situations in which there is increased risk, allowing operators to take early corrective action before that risk results in an incident or accident The BOQA program is a tool in the operators overall operational risk assessment and prevention program BOQA, being proactive in identifying and addressing risk will enhance safety
The Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF) published in June 2013 the "Recommendations on the Proactive Use of Voyage Data Recorder Information" and went forth with submitting these recommendations as an info paper to the IMO (NAV 59/INF.9) 12/07/2013 with the title "The proactive use of Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) information". Main aspect with this paper was to use the ship's VDR as a data source for proactive safety monitoring. This paper called for:
Routine transmission of VDR data ashore
Auto-analysis of data
Alerts on non-conformance
...and as such the paper described in essence a BOQA solution.
Methodology
BOQA is used to objectively monitor the human operational performance and external factors, such as weather and other traffic around the vessel, by utilising various types of sensor and external data and comparing this data with defined best-practices and Standard operating procedure (SOPs). BOQA is usually not used to monitor the internal technical performance of the vessel machinery and equipment-base, which in most cases already has a wide range of proprietary monitoring and alarm functions.
BOQA is often a software system consisting of shipboard real-time data collection and sensing, automated data transmission between the vessel and shore and a shore-based system which receives, combines, analyses, alerts and stores the data according to defined rules and logic.
BOQA usually includes three "time-domains", i.e.:
a historical database of data and events and which is used for trend- and pattern analysis a real-time reactive stream analytics component which can react to events or deviations in real- or near-real-time (NRT) a predictive and pro-active component, which assists the operator in taking actions before an event occurs
Event types
BOQA is a continuously developing methodology, much in the same way as FOQA. At present time BOQA solutions are known to be able monitor some of the following various event types some of which might include: