The Society of Consulting Marine Engineers and Ship Surveyors (SCMS) was founded in 1920 to provide a central organisation for Consulting Marine Engineers, Naval Architects and Ship Surveyors.

When we were called in they already had a solution that had been built internally to hold information about members of the society and keep track of all the shipping vessels registered with the society.

One goal was to reduce the amount of paper that they have to store. There are a number of forms that vessel owner submit and have to be kept. The initial and ongoing inspections that are undertaken also produce large volumes of paper that must be kept.

We developed a solution to let owners register their vessels through a web page with the data entered automatically transferred into the office database. The completed forms are turned into PDFs and stored electronically. The system also held details of when inspections were conducted by surveyors (equivalent to MOT tests for road vehicles) and is used to notify vessel owners when an inspection is required.

We developed an iPad app that is used by surveyors to conduct and record the results of each inspection. The app produces a PDF of the completed inspection, again significantly reducing the amount of paperwork being stored. The iPad app also lets scrutineers check and approve the surveyors’ inspections once they have been uploaded. Signatures of the vessel owner, surveyor and scrutineer are all captured with the iPad.

Paul Owen, Secretary of the society commented, “Cutting Edge provided us with an excellent service to update our existing database and add new functionality and access via iPad for gathering complex remote survey data. This was all achieved without interruption in our small but busy office which constantly required access to the database.”