Strategic by design: unlocking the full value of fleet-wide passage planning

Passage planning is one of the most meticulous and essential tasks in maritime navigation. It underpins safe operations, regulatory compliance, and the successful execution of every voyage. But despite its importance, traditional planning methods have often been time-consuming and labour-intensive, requiring crews to manually reference navigational charts, weather forecasts, tidal patterns, and regulatory data from disparate sources.

Now, in an increasingly complex operating environment, the role of passage planning is evolving from a compliance requirement to a strategic tool that supports consistency, transparency, and operational resilience across the fleet.

This shift matters most to those responsible for safe navigation and regulatory compliance, both aboard and onshore. These teams must align passage plans with company policies, adjust to real-time voyage changes, and ensure that every plan satisfies safety and commercial obligations.

Clear, consistent planning supports better oversight and more informed decision-making, especially when vessels face operational complexity at sea. Over time, centralising planning practices creates a unified operational foundation—one that enables fleets to respond to shifting environmental regulations, inspection regimes, and charter party requirements with greater agility and control.

Manual passage planning often depends on vessel-specific knowledge, varying formats, or spreadsheets disconnected from shoreside systems. These inconsistencies slow down reviews and increase the risk of misalignment. 

Inconsistent plans can lead to: 

• Unnecessary inspection findings, when documentation doesn't meet expected standards
• Inefficient reviews when bespoke formats require interpretation
• Longer onboarding times for rotating crew unfamiliar with specific vessel processes

And while many crews are highly skilled, they’re often let down by processes and tools that lack consistency and standardisation.

With OneOcean 2025, shoreside teams can configure and deploy standardised waypoint tables that define what data is included in a passage plan and how it’s presented. These tables can reflect company policies, regulatory requirements, and safety margins so every ship works from the same structure, with the same logic, and the same expectations. This configuration can be managed via the Platform’s shoreside solution to simplify rollout across the fleet. 

This approach helps reduce human error, simplifies shoreside reviews, and ensures that even rotating crew can contribute to a consistent planning process—reducing risk and improving operational efficiency across the fleet. 

The real strength of OneOcean 2025 lies in its balance between structure and adaptability. Through FleetManager, shoreside teams can further standardise passage planning elements across the fleet—ensuring a shared understanding of what’s required while retaining the flexibility to tailor plans to each vessel’s unique characteristics. 

• Setting required columns in waypoint tables for navigation, safety margins, or environmental data 
• Deploying multiple standardised UKC policies based on vessel type, cargo, or operational scenario 
• Applying updated squat formulas and clearance thresholds for dynamic under-keel management 

Unlike the idea of a single UKC policy for all vessels—which would be impractical due to the unique draft, equipment, and routes of each ship—OneOcean allows for the creation and deployment of multiple company UKC policies. These can be applied based on vessel type, route characteristics, or operational scenario, ensuring relevance without sacrificing consistency. 

By giving ships access to the right policy, in the right format, at the right time, managers can support both operational flexibility and audit readiness without adding to the crew's workload. 

Voyage conditions don’t stand still, and neither should your plans. Weather systems evolve. Port conditions change. New discharge restrictions or inspection requirements may come into effect mid-voyage. That’s why OneOcean 2025 integrates a wide range of dynamic data sources directly into the planning interface, including: 

• Tidal heights via Admiralty TotalTide 
• Dynamic environmental zones and alerts via EnviroManager+ 
• Weather forecasts for specific coordinates and routes 
• Navigational and safety warnings from NavArea bulletins 
• UKC and OHC calculations based on current route data and vessel parameters

When a vessel needs to change course, enter a new regulatory area, or respond to port instructions, the passage plan can be updated in-platform. These updates are version-controlled, time-stamped, and linked to user credentials ensuring traceability and audit readiness.

This adaptability helps ship and shore teams stay aligned throughout the voyage. And it turns planning into a live, responsive process, not a static document that becomes obsolete the moment conditions change.

For those managing fleets, OneOcean 2025 delivers measurable daily benefits: 

• Less time clarifying plan formats or chasing missing plan details 
• Improved transparency with faster planning updates, enabling shoreside teams to make more informed decisions around logistics, scheduling, and support 
• Access to updated plans and supporting data for better shoreside decision-making 
• Streamlined audits with revision histories and digital signatures 

But the long-term value is even greater for the business: 

• Stronger compliance culture with less reliance on manual oversight 
• Easier adaptation to new regulations, inspections, or charter terms 
• Greater operational resilience in a volatile, high-stakes industry 
• More predictable outcomes when safety, regulatory, or commercial conditions change unexpectedly 

In a world where charter party contracts, environmental obligations, and safety risks converge, a structured approach to passage planning becomes a strategic asset. 

The maritime industry is evolving fast. Environmental compliance is tightening. Charter party terms are growing more prescriptive. SIRE 2.0 inspections are placing new demands on tanker operations. And digital systems are increasingly expected to work together, not in silos. 

Passage planning sits at the intersection of these forces. And the companies that treat it as a strategic lever, not just a technical requirement, are better positioned to meet today’s challenges and tomorrow’s unknowns. 

Passage planning has always been critical to safe and compliant navigation. Today, it also plays a growing role in helping fleets navigate operational complexity with clarity, confidence, and alignment to company standards. By transforming a fragmented process into a unified workflow, OneOcean 2025 supports safer voyages, stronger compliance, and more controlled operations. 

The result? A planning process that delivers tactical gains for crew and strategic value for the business.

Discover how OneOcean 2025 transforms passage planning into a fleet-wide advantage →