Audits, Inspections & Visits

During an audit, the auditor says what they found, and Navatom AI proposes the checklist answers, remarks and findings, and drafts the completion report. The auditor confirms each one before it is saved.

Build comprehensive audit checklists with five question types — Checkbox, Staged, Inquiry, Single Choice, and Multiple Choice. Each checklist item captures the specific evidence your auditors need to evaluate, with structured response formats that drive consistent, comparable results across audits.

Staged items break a check into steps, each marked done or not done. Inquiry items capture free-text evidence.

Choice items enforce selection from predefined options. Mix and match types within a single checklist to match any audit standard or regulatory framework.

Document findings with the granularity your compliance team demands. Each finding records the evidence, the applicable regulatory reference, and a severity classification.

Link findings to the rules they break, such as a paragraph of the ISM Code, from structured rule books, for full regulatory traceability.

Findings are not just notes — they are structured records that feed into your organization's corrective action pipeline. Priority and severity ratings ensure the most critical issues get immediate attention while observations are tracked for trend analysis.

A finding added on a checklist question lists the other findings on the same question or with the same rules, each with the audit it was found in. The auditor sees at once whether the same problem was found before.

Plan your entire annual audit program in a dedicated yearly planning view. A timeline or a calendar shows each vessel's planned, started and completed audits for the year, giving management and DPAs a complete overview of the assessment calendar for the year ahead.

Choose one vessel or several, identify gaps in coverage, and ensure that every vessel receives the required assessments within the required timeframes. The yearly plan reads from the schedule, so planned audits appear there as soon as they are scheduled.

Schedule audits directly into the Navatom calendar. Each planned audit comes from a published definition and has a window of days around its date in which it should start.

Plan an audit once or on a repeating schedule, from a single ship visit to a quarterly internal audit program.

Planned audits wait on the Scheduled list until someone starts them, on board or in the office, and show on the calendar and in each vessel's yearly plan, so audit coordinators, vessel masters, and shore management all see upcoming assessments.

Structure your audit process with formal opening (initial) and closing (final) meetings. Record each meeting's start and end, its notes, and who attended, creating the documentary evidence that ISM Code audits require.

Attendee tracking captures who was present at each meeting, from the crew on board that day and from the office staff. Meeting records belong to the audit and print with it, forming part of the complete audit package.

Plan an audit's timetable as planning events, the inspections, interviews and walk-rounds, each with a start and an end, beside the declared start and completion dates. When the work is done, the auditors write their completion report on the audit before it is completed.

The vessel runs its own internal audits on the ship app: officers start a scheduled audit, fill in its checklists, record the meetings and findings, and complete it. The Master and the Chief Engineer can convert findings of the vessel's own audits, and of port State, class and insurer inspections, into tracked records on board.

Build reusable audit definitions with an approval step before every version. A draft moves through Draft, Waiting for Approval, and Completed or Rejected, and only an approved draft is published, so only approved, controlled versions are used for live audits.

Revise a published definition in a new draft while audits keep using the current version, and deprecate one that is no longer needed.

Every audit keeps a copy of the version it was started from, and the Version tab lists every published version with its notes and date, so you always know which version was used for any given audit.

Assign auditors in three groups: company auditors from your office staff, ship auditors from the vessel's crew, and third-party auditors from the outside party, each shown where the audit's direction calls for it. Every finding names the auditor who found it.

Build your audit team from any combination of internal and external resources. The three-list architecture ensures clean separation between your organization's personnel and external auditors while allowing them to participate in the same audit.

Not all assessments are the same. Navatom records three assessment types, Audit, Inspection, and Ship Visit, so a formal ISM audit, a port State inspection and a superintendent's visit are each labeled for what they are.

All three follow the same steps and statuses in one module, so they share checklists, findings, meetings and reports. The type comes from the audit definition, or is chosen when an outside inspection is recorded.

Identify the outside authority behind every inspection. Seven authority types (Port State, Classification Society, Flag State, P&I Insurance, H&M Insurance, Safety Terminal Inspection and Other) record who carried out an outside audit, inspection or ship visit, and a port State inspection also records its regime, such as the Paris MoU.

The authority shapes what follows. A port State inspection records deficiency and action codes on each finding and its detention on the inspection, and findings of port State, class and insurer inspections can be converted on board by the Master or the Chief Engineer.

Link every finding to the rules it breaks. Findings name rules from structured rule books, such as a paragraph of the ISM Code, so your compliance team can trace any finding to its regulatory source and demonstrate compliance during external audits.

Rule references are not free text: they are structured links to the rule books, and they carry over when a finding is converted into a deficiency or non-conformity. Past findings on the same rule show whether a problem keeps coming back.

Close the loop from finding to resolution with structured corrective action workflows. Every record made from an audit finding is followed up in its own module, with interim, corrective and preventive actions, assignees and due dates.

Monitor what audits have raised across all vessels: a dashboard widget counts the issues from audit findings that are still open, whatever the audit's own status.

Verification ensures that corrective actions are not just submitted but reviewed and accepted by the office before closure.

Convert findings into formal deficiencies with precise type classification. Seven deficiency types — Major Non-Conformity, Non-Conformity, Observation, Deficiency, Technical Finding, Near Miss, and Accident — map directly to maritime regulatory frameworks and your ISM manual's classification hierarchy.

Each type is followed up in its own module, with its own actions and due dates: non-conformities, major non-conformities and observations in Non-Conformities, deficiencies in Deficiencies, and accidents, near misses and technical findings in their own modules. A finding recorded as grounds for detention can become only a deficiency or a major non-conformity.

Every audit follows a controlled lifecycle from creation through completion. The Ongoing, Completed, and Invalid status model provides clear visibility into where each audit stands, and only people with the right to audit can complete one.

Invalid status handles cancelled or superseded audits without deleting data. Completed audits lock their findings and checklists, preserving the record as-is for regulatory review. The lifecycle ensures no audit is accidentally modified after closure, and an audit closed too early can be reopened by the office.

Monitor your audit program's health with four dashboard widgets: the audits under way, their open findings, how much of each audit's checklists is answered, and the open issues made from audit findings, for the environments and vessels you choose.

Widgets provide at-a-glance KPIs for audit coordinators and DPAs: How many audits are ongoing? Which findings are still waiting to be followed up?

Which issues raised from audit findings are still open? Open any table to reach the audit behind it.

Analytics pages show how the audit program runs across the fleet: the program itself, outside inspections, the findings, and how their follow-up is going.

Plan and execute audit programs across your entire fleet from a single platform. Schedule vessel audits, follow each vessel's year in the yearly plan, and see the audits under way across the fleet on one dashboard.

Fleet-level views show open findings, checklist completion and the open issues raised from audits to give management a complete picture.

Filter by vessel, type, direction, or audit authority to analyze specific segments of your fleet. Identify vessels that need additional attention and allocate audit resources where they will have the greatest impact on safety and compliance.

Classify where each audit takes place with three environment types: Ship, Office, and Third Party. The environment follows from the audit's direction.

An audit of a vessel lists ship auditors from its crew and appears in that vessel's yearly plan, while an audit of the office or of an outside company does not.

Dashboards and the findings list filter by environment, so the office can follow vessel audits, its own management-system reviews and supplier audits apart.

Generate a PDF of any audit, whether under way, completed or marked invalid. On the company app, choose the parts to include, checklists, findings, planning, meetings, completion report, comments, attachments and events, and add a watermark; the PDF opens with the audit's details and its auditors.

Use printed reports for flag State and classification society reviews, client presentations, and internal management reviews, or keep them on file.

Every action within an audit is recorded in its event history, with who did it and when. From audit creation and checklist completion through finding documentation and status transitions, the event stream provides a second-by-second narrative of the entire assessment process.

Event tracking is not just a log — it is an accountability system. Every event carries full user attribution, timestamp, and contextual data.

Inspectors, compliance managers, and external auditors can reconstruct exactly what happened and when.