The Lashing@Sea project was started to evaluate standards and technology in sea transport. Trigger was the noted development of a non level playing field and an increasing number of incidents involving cargo damages and losses. A consortium comprising of 23 companies from industry and governments was brought together to perform the work and evaluate findings. The group included ship owner/operators, lashing gear and on board software manufacturers, governments, classification societies and technology institutes.Procedures, rules and typical incidents were summarized from documentation and more specifically from interviews and questionnaires by practical experts. The obtained insights were validated versus the operational conditions on board by measurements onboard of five ships and by means of dedicated tests on shore.It was found that several factors can be listed in container transport, which affect reliability of the secured cargo stow. Two significant aspects were identified that are not included in present design practice and thus reduce existing safety margins. These are dynamic loads by hull flexibility and interaction between adjacent container rows. In addition it was found that reliability is reduced by disagreements between the actual cargo stow on board and the planned situation. Critically planned configurations may thus become unstable.Findings in RoRo and Heavy lift transport showed that design assumptions match the behaviour of the ships and cargo in service. There are developments to reduce cargo securing compared to international recommendations. International legislation allows for such reductions but does not provide guidelines on the procedures to be followed. The Lashing@Sea project formulated a “Unified Interpretation” of the existing legislation as a first proposal for this. A request to follow up on that was forwarded to IACS and IMO to include the recommendations in practical industry and thus take a step towards a more level playing field.
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