Bureau Veritas joins consortium to assess fire safety on containerships

Classification society Bureau Veritas (BV) has joined a consortium that will deliver a Formal Safety Assessment study on Container Ship fires to the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).

Led by the Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology (DBI), the project aims to identify cost-effective risk control options for cargo fires on board container vessels.

Considering the constant increase in containership sizes and the frequency of fire originating in containers, the Formal Safety Assessment study will quantitatively assess the fire risks on board containerships and evaluate new fire safety measures by comparing the risk reductions and the associated costs.

The project has been awarded to a consortium led by DBI supported by Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), the University of Southern Denmark (SUD), Odense Maritime Technology (OMT), and BV.

Work is already progressing with a series of four online Hazard Identification workshops led by DBI and covering all possible fire safety areas (prevention, detection and alarm, containment, firefighting). The HAZID workshops gathered experts from major containership companies, Flag State administrations, equipment suppliers, and members of the consortium.

The consortium expects the study to be finalised in February 2023. The results will afterwards be presented to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).