Revision of a part of the Ship Safety Act (Article 8) was promulgated on 12 September 2012 and will be effective on 1 January 2013. The Classification Societies, including ClassNK are expected to be approved for SR Survey and Issuance of SR Certificate of Japanese flag ships since 1 January 2013 on behalf of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (hereinafter "the Maritime Authority").
Although at the present it is before the promulgation of the revised Ordinance Related, ClassNK will inform ClassNK's procedures of SR Survey and the Issuance of SR Certificate as follows.

1. Implementation of SR Survey for Japanese flag ships.
As mentioned above, ClassNK is expected to carry out the SR Survey of Japanese flag ships on or after 1 January 2013.
Please submit the Application for Inspection along with the following documents directly to the ClassNK service site in charge.
(1) "Notification of Inspection results of Ship Station and Ship Earth Station" issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications or "Report of the Inspection Results of Ship Station and Ship Earth Station" issued by the Registered Inspector approved by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
(Please note that the Notification/Report is effective only within three months from the issue date)
(2) A copy of the existing SR Certificate (Only ships engaged on international voyages)
(3) Others
In case where applying along with the aforementioned "Report of the Inspection Results of Ship Station and Ship Earth Station", if "Notification of the Omission of Radio Station Inspection" is issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, please submit a copy of the said Notification together to ClassNK.

If "Notification of the Omission of Radio Station Inspection" is not received, please describe in the column of the message on the application form as follows;
"We will apply the occasional survey in case where the inspection of paragraph 1 of paragraph 73 of the Radio Act has not been omitted by the provisions of clause 3 of the same article".
In this case, please submit a copy of "Notification of the Omission of Radio Station Inspection" to the ClassNK Classification Department when you receive it later on.

(To be continued)