ECDIS Type-Specific Training —
What Ship Managers Actually Need to Know

ECDIS type-specific training is one of the most misunderstood requirements in the industry. Ship managers assume it is a hard legal requirement under STCW and chase type-specific certificates for every officer after every crew change. In reality, STCW does not require type-specific training at all. What STCW requires is generic ECDIS training. What RightShip RISQ requires is documented familiarization. What SIRE 2.0 expects goes further — and confusing these three different standards is costing companies time and money.

Here is what each regime actually requires, what inspectors check, and what records you need to keep on board.

Three Different Standards — Not One

What STCW Actually Says

The source document is IMO circular STCW.7/Circ.24/Rev.1 (2017). It is unambiguous on this point:

"No requirement exists for the approved training on ECDIS equipment to be type-specific. The knowledge, understanding and proficiency required to be demonstrated is generalized to ensure seafarers have the necessary skills for basic operation of all types of equipment."

What STCW does require:

• Approved ECDIS training — minimum standard is IMO Model Course 1.27
• Officers with a Certificate of Competency valid after 01 January 2017 and without an ECDIS limitation on their certificate have already met the generic training requirement
• Where the approved training has not been completed, a limitation must appear on the CoC — if no limitation is shown, the CoC itself is evidence of training

Where companies get tripped up: an officer joins from a vessel with a different ECDIS brand. The superintendent sends him on a type-specific course for the new vessel's system before allowing him to take a watch. This is good practice — but it is not what STCW mandates. STCW mandates familiarization. The distinction matters when you are managing costs and scheduling across a fleet.

What RightShip RISQ 3.2 Actually Checks

The RISQ question on ECDIS (Section 2, Certification and Personnel Management) asks: "If ECDIS is fitted on board, has the Master and Navigation Officers been familiarised with the ECDIS equipment installed on board, and were objective evidences of this familiarisation available?"

Three things the inspector is looking for:

1. A company procedure in the SMS that defines how familiarization is delivered — the timescale, the method, who delivers it, how competency is evaluated, and what records are kept
2. Completed familiarization checklists for the Master and each watchkeeping officer — specific to the ECDIS model installed on board
3. Evidence that familiarization was completed before taking an independent navigational watch — not after several weeks on board

Methods RISQ accepts for delivering familiarization:

• Shore-based manufacturer training followed by onboard familiarization
• Computer-Based Training (CBT) followed by onboard familiarization
• eLearning followed by onboard familiarization
• Manufacturer's training mode on the ECDIS itself, followed by onboard familiarization
• Onboard training by an appropriately trained crew member or trainer

The most common RISQ finding on ECDIS is not that officers lack a type-specific certificate. It is that the familiarization checklist is missing, incomplete, or dated after the officer had already been keeping watches. That is an ISM finding as much as an ECDIS finding — it shows the SMS procedure is not being followed.

What SIRE 2.0 Expects — and Why It Goes Further

For tanker operators, SIRE 2.0 raises the bar. OCIMF's guidance in the SIRE 2.0 question library is explicit:

"Type-specific ECDIS training for the specific system fitted on board, developed by the respective ECDIS makers, should be provided by the company to all Masters and Deck Officers before they take charge of a navigational watch."

This is OCIMF's recommendation — not a statutory requirement under STCW — but in practice, for a SIRE inspection, the distinction is academic. If your officers do not have type-specific training documentation and your SIRE inspector flags it, the finding goes into the report that your oil major charterer reads.

What SIRE 2.0 expects specifically:

• Generic ECDIS training to IMO Model Course 1.27 standard for all Masters and bridge officers
• Type-specific training for the make and model fitted on board — either a manufacturer's course ashore or a recognised online equivalent
• Onboard familiarization completed before taking an independent watch, with a completed familiarization checklist on board
• Refresher training maintained — officers should not be considered permanently competent after one training event
• Contingency scenarios covered in familiarization: ECDIS power failure, loss of GPS/heading inputs, spoofing and jamming

The SIRE inspector will also check whether the operator declared the method of ECDIS familiarization in the pre-inspection questionnaire (PIQ) and whether what is on board matches what was declared. A discrepancy between the PIQ and the records on board is a finding in itself.

The Practical Problem — Crew Changes

The scenario that causes the most problems is straightforward: an officer joins the vessel, takes over watch-keeping, and three weeks later when the RISQ inspector arrives, there is no familiarization checklist on file for him because nobody arranged it when he joined.

This happens because familiarization is treated as an administrative task that gets deprioritised during a busy crew change. The officer arrives, the outgoing officer gives him a handover, he takes the first watch — and the familiarization record never gets completed.

What needs to happen instead:

1. Before joining — provide access to manufacturer CBT or eLearning for the specific ECDIS model on board
2. Day one on board — complete the onboard familiarization checklist with the outgoing officer or Master before standing an independent watch
3. Record retained on board — signed by the officer and the Master, dated on joining day
4. Office copy maintained — if the vessel gets inspected 3 months after the officer joined, you want the record available without having to search for it

What Records to Keep on Board

Summary — What Each Regime Requires

To put it plainly:

• STCW — Generic training. A CoC without an ECDIS limitation issued after 01 January 2017 satisfies this. No type-specific certificate is legally required.
• RightShip RISQ 3.2 — Documented familiarization with the specific ECDIS on board, completed before first independent watch, backed by an SMS procedure and retained records.
• SIRE 2.0 / OCIMF — Generic training plus type-specific training strongly recommended, plus onboard familiarization. For tankers trading with oil majors, treat this as a practical requirement.

The finding that appears most often in RISQ and SIRE inspection reports is not a missing type-specific certificate. It is a missing or undated familiarization checklist, or an SMS procedure that does not match what is actually happening on board. Get those basics right — for every officer, at every crew change — and you have covered 90% of what an inspector is looking for.