Mr. Gulliksen said that each Carnival ship also had a dedicated firefighting team and that "audits are carried out by a third-party certification body (classification society) as well as internal auditors to verify that the safety management system procedures are followed".
For comparison with classification society rule values, a simple beam theory strength analysis of the ship's midship section was performed first, and then another finite element analysis was carried out, whereby the imposed loads were tuned to the rule values of vertical bending moments.
Both mild steel and higher tensile steel plates and sections built into a ship are to be produced at works approved by the appropriate classification society.
For all ships, passenger and cargo, the approval of the maximum permissible draft must be sought from the classification society.
"The idea is that a ship is its own best lifeboat," said John Hicks, the vice president for global passenger ships at Lloyds Register, the largest ship classification society.
The strength of the hull must be adequate for the service intended; detailed scantlings (frame dimensions and plate thicknesses) can be obtained from the rules of the classification society.
Ships are designed on the basis of classification society rules on one hand, direct calculations on the other, or by means of special computer programs, developed by classification societies, such as SafeHull, Shipright or Poseidon, or combining the two.
