Emergency Marine Electrical Repair SOP

What the emergency marine electrical repair sop process is

Scanel answers the same duty line whether the call comes in at 03:00 or 15:00, and "Vessel reports electrical failure to 24/7 service line" is deliberately the only intake this chart has: a bilge pump alarm and a total propulsion loss enter through the same door, and it is the next two steps, not the caller, that decide how the yard responds. "ServiceDesk performs 24/7 triage and confirms fault symptoms" gathers what the crew can tell a duty coordinator over the phone, and everything downstream, how many people go out and how fast, keys off the decision that follows it, not off the caller's own sense of urgency. A crew that describes a tripped breaker as an emergency and a crew that describes a genuine propulsion loss calmly are both real inputs; only one of them should change how many technicians Scanel sends and how quickly.

That is the job of "Fault affects safety or vessel operability?", and it is drawn as a real decision with two named outcomes rather than a single informal urgency label. Critical, a loss of propulsion, a loss of steering power, or a fault that leaves the vessel without essential electrical supply, routes to "Dispatch nearest technician immediately, mobilize backup crew" with a second technician held on standby regardless of the hour. Degraded, a fault the vessel can still operate through on a redundant circuit or a non-essential system, routes to "Schedule technician dispatch within the stated response window" instead, so a genuinely critical fault is never queued behind a routine one, and a routine one never pulls a full emergency crew off a bed at 3am for a problem the vessel could safely wait a few hours on. This is what makes the chart an operationalization of Scanel's 24/7 promise rather than a description of it: the promise is kept by a named person weighing impact before a single technician is mobilized, not by a blanket policy of sending everyone, every time.

The chart also assumes the first fix does not always hold. "Repair possible with parts on hand?" is a real logistics gate, not a formality, because a technician standing in an engine room at night with the wrong spare cannot repair a fault any faster than one who has not yet diagnosed it, so a "Part required" answer routes to "Source replacement part or specialist support" rather than an open-ended delay. And "System passes function test?" is the gate that keeps a vessel from being handed back on a repair that was never actually proven: a "Fail" answer sends the job to "Return to repair for further correction" and back through the repair step again, so "Return system to service and confirm with vessel crew" only ever runs against a system that held its reading under load. This is Scanel's fault-on-a-system-already-in-service chart: use the Marine Electrical Installation SOP for a scheduled, already-scoped job and the Electrical System Commissioning SOP for a system being brought into service for the first time; this one exists for the vessel that cannot wait for either.

What this flowchart covers

In this template

• The single 24/7 intake and urgency call: "Vessel reports electrical failure to 24/7 service line" and "ServiceDesk performs 24/7 triage and confirms fault symptoms" feed the "Fault affects safety or vessel operability?" decision before any technician is sized or scheduled
• The impact-assessment gate itself, branching to "Dispatch nearest technician immediately, mobilize backup crew" on a Critical answer and to "Schedule technician dispatch within the stated response window" on a Degraded one, so urgency sets dispatch rather than the other way around
• On-board diagnosis and a parts-readiness gate: "Field technician diagnoses fault on board" feeds "Repair possible with parts on hand?", which branches to "Source replacement part or specialist support" when a part is required rather than leaving the technician stuck at the fault
• Repair and a hard verification gate: "Repair or replace faulty component" and "Function test the repaired system under load" feed the "System passes function test?" decision, which routes a Fail to "Return to repair for further correction" and back through the repair step rather than into handback on an unproven fix
• Return to service and closeout: "Return system to service and confirm with vessel crew" and "Issue completion report and confirm resolution with customer" close the loop that started at the duty line
• Named owners and hours on every row via the People and Workload columns, so the workload BI panel can show Derek Holt's triage and dispatch hours recurring across both the Critical and Degraded branches, while Jonas Whitmore's hours cluster in the hands-on diagnosis and repair work the dispatch decision sends him to

When to use this template

• You're standardising how Scanel's ServiceDesk and field technicians handle an out-of-hours fault report so a genuinely critical defect is never queued behind a routine one, and a routine one never triggers a full emergency mobilization
• You need a documented basis for why one fault call pulled an immediate multi-person dispatch while another was scheduled within a normal response window, rather than an informal judgement call nobody wrote down
• A repair was handed back to a vessel and the fault recurred, and you want the function-test gate and the fail-loop back into repair enforced as a real checkpoint rather than a technician's own sign-off
• You're onboarding a new duty coordinator or field technician and need a reference for exactly what gets assessed before dispatch is sized and what has to pass before a vessel is handed back
• You're scoping a job against Scanel's other electrical SOPs and need to confirm this one applies: a fault on a system already in service, not a scheduled installation or a system being commissioned for the first time

How it works

1. Replace the lanes with your actual response roles

   This chart uses ServiceDesk, Field Electrical, Engineering and Customer. If a separate person owns the impact-assessment call from whoever answers the duty line, or a dedicated QA role signs off the function test, give that role its own lane rather than folding it into an existing one.

2. Write real criteria into the impact-assessment decision

   "Fault affects safety or vessel operability?" is only as reliable as the examples behind it. List the failure types that always count as Critical, loss of propulsion, loss of steering, loss of essential electrical supply, and the ones that are Degraded even though they sound urgent to the crew reporting them. Put the list in the row's comment field so the split doesn't depend on who is holding the phone.

3. State your dispatch response windows in writing

   "Schedule technician dispatch within the stated response window" needs an actual number, for example a stated hours-to-arrival commitment by vessel location, not just "soon". Attach it to the row so a Degraded call still has an enforceable commitment behind it.

4. Set People and Workload on every row before you rely on the BI panel

   The workload panel can only total hours for rows that carry them. Fill in People and Workload for each step as you adapt the chart, using realistic effort hours rather than elapsed time, so a night with a Critical mobilization actually shows up as a heavy night for the right technician.

5. Define what a passed function test actually proves

   "System passes function test?" needs a stated standard, a load, a duration, or the specification the repaired system is tested against, not just a technician's sign-off taken right after reconnection. Attach that standard to the row itself so "Return to repair for further correction" is triggered by the same bar every time.

Frequently asked questions

What triggers the start of the emergency repair process?

The process starts at "Vessel reports electrical failure to 24/7 service line": a vessel already in service reports a fault to Scanel's duty line, at any hour. "ServiceDesk performs 24/7 triage and confirms fault symptoms" gathers what is known before the impact decision, so the response is sized on the fault, not on how the caller describes it.

What makes a fault "Critical" rather than "Degraded"?

In this template, "Fault affects safety or vessel operability?" routes a Critical answer, loss of propulsion, loss of steering power, or loss of essential electrical supply, straight to "Dispatch nearest technician immediately, mobilize backup crew". A Degraded fault, one the vessel can still operate through on a redundant circuit or a non-essential system, goes to "Schedule technician dispatch within the stated response window" instead. The decision is made once, by a named role, before dispatch is sized either way.

What happens if the technician doesn't have the right part on board?

"Repair possible with parts on hand?" routes a "Part required" answer to "Source replacement part or specialist support" rather than leaving the technician stuck at the fault with no next step. Once the part or the specialist support arrives, the process continues into "Repair or replace faulty component".

What happens if the repair fails the function test?

"System passes function test?" routes a Fail outcome to "Return to repair for further correction", which loops back into the repair step rather than allowing "Return system to service and confirm with vessel crew" to run. The vessel is not handed back, and the completion report is not issued, until a subsequent function test passes under load.

How is this different from Scanel's Marine Electrical Installation SOP or Electrical System Commissioning SOP?

Both of those apply to work that is scheduled in advance: installation covers a defined scope of new electrical work, and commissioning covers proving out a system before it is brought into service for the first time. This SOP exists for the opposite situation, a system already in service that has developed a fault right now, at any hour, with an impact-assessment step that has no equivalent in either of those SOPs because neither of them starts from an unplanned, urgent call.