Buyer's guide · onboarding
Buying the system is the easy half. This is the 30-day rollout Full Ahead runs with new operators — what happens each week, what data is needed, and the point in each phase where rollouts usually quietly fail.
Days 1–2
Create the workspace, invite the technical office, set roles (admin, superintendent, crew). The workspace opens with a demo fleet already loaded so superintendents can learn the flow before a single real record is touched.
Where it goes wrong: Decide the role model now: crew update job status only, superintendents own job details. Retro-fitting permissions after the crew are trained causes confusion.
Days 3–7
Vessels, particulars and the equipment register with maker, model, location, criticality and current running hours. Import by CSV per vessel; the pilot ship first, in full, before the rest of the fleet.
Where it goes wrong: Do not import a decade of noise. Bring the equipment tree and current hours; bring history for critical equipment only. A clean register beats a complete one.
Days 8–12
Load planned jobs with calendar and running-hour intervals plus last-done dates, so the system can calculate what is genuinely due. Load the certificate register with issue and expiry dates for ISM, ISPS, SOLAS, MARPOL and class.
Where it goes wrong: The first overdue list will be uncomfortable and it should be. Do not adjust due dates to make it green — deferrals with a reason and an approver are the audit-safe route.
Days 13–18
The pilot ship works exclusively in Full Ahead for one voyage leg. Install the app on the engine-room tablet, disconnect, complete jobs, capture evidence, then watch the sync queue clear on arrival.
Where it goes wrong: Have the chief engineer close a job at sea on day one. Adoption is decided by that first successful offline completion, not by the training session.
Days 19–24
Repeat the import for the remaining vessels — faster each time as job templates are reused. Connect running hours and any sensor feed so the adaptive engine can begin re-timing jobs against real condition rather than the calendar.
Where it goes wrong: Assign one named owner per vessel for the first month. Shared responsibility for data quality means none.
Days 25–30
Run an internal audit against the new system: ask for evidence of a critical job, a drill record and a certificate, and require the crew to produce them unaided. Export the audit pack. Only then retire the old system.
Where it goes wrong: Keep a read-only export of the legacy system's history in the evidence library. You will be asked for pre-migration records at the next external audit.
No servers, no per-ship installation and no IT project: the app installs from the browser and runs offline on the hardware already on board. See how the offline SaaS model works.
A trial workspace is created with a demo fleet in under a minute — that is phase one done before your coffee.
On Full Ahead a first vessel is live in about a week and a fleet of up to twenty-five ships inside 30 days, because there is no server build, no per-vessel install and no configuration project. Traditional enterprise implementations run three to nine months, most of it spent on infrastructure and equipment coding.
Four exports get you 90% of the way: the equipment register with running hours, the job list with intervals and last-done dates, the certificate register with expiry dates, and the crew list with roles. CSV is fine. Everything else can be added as the crew works.
No, and you should not. Run both in parallel for one full maintenance cycle — typically one month — with the old system as the record of truth until the first audit dry run passes on the new one.
The crew were trained on a system that assumes bandwidth. If a chief engineer tries twice in a rolling engine room and the screen spins, they go back to the spreadsheet and the data dies quietly. Offline-first is not a feature here, it is the adoption strategy.
Tell us the ship count, trades and current system — you get a dated plan back.
Talk to us
Ask about migrating an existing PMS, offline operation at sea, class and flag audits, or what your fleet would actually cost. No sales sequence, no discovery call gate.
