The industry is therefore encouraged to submit drawings electronically.
It is expected that this will speed up the review process, and give room for a more efficient case handling process.
Lasse Karlsen, technical director at the NMA says “The Norwegian Maritime Authority hopes that everyone will submit their drawings electronically, and we hope that this will improve our case handling time. In addition there are also environmental benefits to be achieved in the form of reduced paper copies. The extent of paper copies can be reduced to only the ones needed to be posted on the vessel itself.”
Questions and answers regarding the subject can be found here.
Only drawings in a format larger than A1 should hereafter be submitted on paper in addition to the electronic copy. The benefits achieved by submitting a drawing electronically is the time saved from not having to produce, pack and send the drawing by courier. This can be a time consuming process and require extra resources in the form of copiers and personnel.
This will also rationalize the case handling procedures within the NMA itself because it will reduce internal logistics.
Karlsen points out that this will lead to a quicker and less resource-intensive process, and that it will reduce the need for physical storage and filing space.
With distribution of drawings reduced to the push of a few buttons, NMA hopes the industry will notice they get a quicker response to their transmittals. The NMA believes most will choose to submit their drawings electronically.