Society Annual Report 2024

During the last four years, Iymcs Courses have been running through the Society's Member schools: the feedback from them and their students, has been good. General acceptance of the Iymcs Certifications has been positive due to their high level of; detail, security and compliance: the certification presentation is in keeping with Flag Administration requirements. On a regular basis, we receive certification enquiries from; Flag Administrations, industry professionals and crew: that we deal with promptly through our 6 day a week technical support service.

Our custom-built Quality Management System (QMS) has proven to be robust and is able to adapt to the needs of our Society Member Schools and their operations. Every year, the Society's operations are audited by the British Standards Institute (BSI) of the Netherlands whose auditing standards are considered one of the highest. We are also required to undertake internal audits of our procedures by an appointed independent ISO qualified auditor. All this ensures a high standard of operations, an essential quality standards assurance for our Society Member Schools and their students. It is an important element for gaining certification acceptance by the Flag Administrations and industry professionals such as the marine insurance underwriters and the pleasure yacht charter fleet operators.

Uniquely, of all the yacht training organisations, that our Society probably is one of the very few, if not the only one, that has been ISO 9001:2015 Certified for operations and for the issuing of certifications.

Throughout the past year, we continued our on-going discussions regarding acceptance with several Flag Administrations including with some of the Red Ensign Group of Flags, and other important ones such as Croatia, Marshall Islands and Malta. Several of the Red Ensign Group Flag Administrations have indicated that, in principal, they have no objections to the Iymcs Certificates of Competency (CoCs) and will consider them for acceptance on a case-by-case basis.

The second batch of Iymcs Course Books for some of the recreational courses have now been completed and will be issued in February 2024. Their unique modern format is interactive and adapts to the needs of the Student/Candidate, caters to bi-lingual content and can be correctly digitised.

We have steadily increased the number of Member schools and colleges, at the time of writing, we have 17 signed-up Members of our Society, 13 of these being long-established entities with good track records. Additionally, we have another 3 schools joining as Society Members during this year. We have two Instructor courses as well as a formal crossover procedure.

Society Progression & Industry Projection for 2024:

Our Society will continue to focus on liaising with Flag Administrations, and seek recognition and/or acceptance of Iymcs Courses and Certifications. We will continue with the process of realignment of the Iymcs professional Certifications of Competency (CoC) to the STCW convention under the watchkeeping and sea service requirements, with the introduction of a selection of IMO model courses to support the CoCs.

Additional publications of Iymcs Course Books, teaching notes and digital presentations are of a high priority for this year. The second stage of development of our Extranet Platform is due to be completed this year and will feature a certified document verification service. The introduction of professional simulators to our Member schools is being developed.