The COVID-19 pandemic has seen classification societies around the world adapting their services to cope with global travel restrictions, allowing inspections to be conducted remotely and for more services to be available online. For the Korean Register, increasing digitalisation and embracing new technologies has been a long-held strategy and the society quickly adapted its services to support customer’s business operations in these challenging times.
KR’s remote survey service was launched over a year ago and is well established, conducted via bi-directional communication with a vessel, by sharing photographs, video contents and digital images from the ship. It can be completed effectively and confidently anywhere in the world without requiring a surveyor’s attendance on board.
Travel restrictions as a result of COVID-19 have prevented KR from conducting some physical surveys and the need for social distancing has made it impossible to send surveyors on board ships. In these cases, KR has been granting extensions for one month or the period of a voyage to the next…