Emergency repair request SOP (24/7 triage to release)

How it works

1. Write down your urgency criteria in words a duty engineer can apply at 3am

   "Defect affects safety, propulsion or sailing readiness?" is only as reliable as the examples behind it. List the failure types that always count as critical (loss of steering, loss of propulsion, a breached hull fitting) and the ones that are routine even though they sound urgent to the caller (a non-critical alarm, a comfort system fault). Without that list, the split depends on who is holding the phone.

2. Name your workshop trades and keep them as separate lanes

   Mechanical, electrical and hydraulic are drawn as one Workshops lane here because they share the same assessment and test steps, but if your yard tracks them as separate cost centers or separate on-call rosters, split "Assess defect on board and confirm repair method" into per-trade lanes so dispatch and workload roll up correctly.

3. State the invoice-after-mobilization rule explicitly

   A critical defect skips "Prepare scope and quotation for customer approval" and goes straight to mobilization, with billing settled afterward. Put that rule in writing, including who is authorized to declare a defect critical, so the exception does not read as an engineer bypassing the quotation step without authority.

4. Set the single-discipline versus multi-discipline threshold

   Decide what evidence at "Assess defect on board and confirm repair method" sends a job into "Repair carried out by one workshop discipline" instead of the coordinated, multi-trade branch, for example, whether the fault is confined to one system or has already cascaded into a second one.

5. Define what a passed function test actually proves

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

6. Assign named owners and track workload against the schedule

   This template ships People and Workload on every row. Replace the sample names with your actual duty engineer, Project Manager and workshop leads, and use the workload figures to see where a Saturday-night critical mobilization collides with jobs already queued in the workshop.

Frequently asked questions

What makes a defect "critical" enough to skip the quotation step?

In this template, anything the duty engineer's technical triage flags as affecting safety, propulsion or sailing readiness takes the critical branch straight to mobilization, bypassing "Prepare scope and quotation for customer approval" entirely. The yard settles the invoice after the repair rather than before it. A routine defect, one that does not threaten the vessel's ability to sail safely, always gets a scope and price first.

What happens if the customer rejects the scope and price?

"Customer approves scope and price?" has a Rejected branch into "Revise scope or price and resubmit", which loops back to the same quotation step rather than ending the request. The job stays open and re-enters the approval decision once the revised estimate is ready, so a rejected quote never silently falls out of the process.

Why does the process assess the defect on board before deciding which workshop repairs it?

"Assess defect on board and confirm repair method" happens after mobilization and before the single-discipline versus multi-discipline decision because a defect that sounds like one trade's problem over the phone often turns out to involve two or three once a technician is looking at it directly. Assessing first and branching second avoids dispatching multiple workshops independently to diagnose the same fault.

What happens if the repair fails the function test?

"System passes function test?" routes a Fail outcome to "Return to workshop for further repair", which loops back into the on-board assessment rather than allowing "Release vessel and issue completion report" to run. The vessel is not released, and the completion report is not issued, until a subsequent function test passes.

Can this SOP be adapted for a repair yard that isn't a ship-repair facility?

Yes. The structure, a duty-line intake, an urgency triage that can bypass quotation for genuinely critical faults, a customer approval gate with a revision loop, mobilization into trade-specific repair, and a test-and-release gate with a fail loop, applies to any facility running emergency and routine repair requests through the same intake, from industrial plant maintenance to fleet vehicle repair. Rename the lanes and adjust the urgency criteria to match your own equipment.