Question 1

What is a planned maintenance system (PMS) for vessels?

Accepted Answer

A planned maintenance system is the register of every piece of shipboard equipment together with the jobs each one requires and the interval at which they fall due. Intervals are driven either by the calendar or by running hours, and the system is what tells a chief engineer what is due this week, what is overdue, and what evidence has been recorded against each completed job. Class and flag both expect a maintained PMS as part of the safety management system.

Question 2

Does it use running hours as well as calendar intervals?

Accepted Answer

Both, on the same equipment record. A generator can carry a 500-running-hour service and a 12-month calendar inspection at once; Full Ahead tracks each trigger independently and raises the job whichever comes first. Running hours can be logged by the crew from the vessel, including with no connectivity.

Question 3

Can crew record maintenance offline at sea?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Full Ahead installs as an app on any phone, tablet or laptop and caches the vessel's data locally. Crew can open jobs, log hours, raise and close defects, run through checklists and attach photographs entirely offline. Everything queues in a sync outbox and uploads automatically when the vessel next has connectivity, with conflicts flagged rather than silently overwritten.

Question 4

How does it help with inspections and audits?

Accepted Answer

Every completed job stores its evidence — photographs, readings, sign-off and timestamp — against the equipment record, and the whole history is written to a tamper-evident audit log. When an auditor, Port State Control officer or vetting inspector asks for proof that a job was done, you produce the record in seconds rather than searching an inbox.

Question 5

How is this different from a maintenance spreadsheet?

Accepted Answer

A spreadsheet holds the schedule but not the proof. It cannot alert you before a certificate expires, it cannot show who changed a due date, it has no evidence attached to the job, and it has no offline version the crew can safely use. Full Ahead keeps the same simplicity but adds alerting, evidence and an immutable history — which is the part audits actually test.

Question 6

What does vessel maintenance software cost?

Accepted Answer

Full Ahead publishes its pricing in euro: €79/month for up to 5 vessels, €249/month for up to 25 and €599/month for an unlimited fleet, with roughly two months saved on annual billing. Every plan includes the full maintenance, compliance and evidence feature set — nothing is held back as a paid module — and starts with a 30-day free trial requiring no card.

A planned maintenance system your crew can use at sea.

Everything a marine PMS has to do.

Equipment register

Running hours & calendar

Defects & inspection alerts

Condition monitoring

Offline evidence capture

Tamper-evident history

Maintenance and compliance on the same record.

Vessel maintenance software questions.

Get your maintenance schedule out of the spreadsheet.