Most of what gets said about refit is about the yard itself. Much less is said about the list of work every refit is built on, even though the yard uses it to quote and plan the job. That list has two halves: the defects the crew have noted during the season and the planned maintenance tasks that fall due around the yard period. In my view the quality of that list decides a large part of how a refit goes, and it is fixed before the yacht arrives: whatever is left off the list, or described too loosely, comes back later as extra work and cost.

What the yard prices
From the yard’s side the logic is simple. A clearly defined and documented scope gets a faster, more accurate quotation, while a vague scope gets priced with contingency, and the arguments over what was agreed happen later – in the dock. Owners’ teams know this well; the difficulty lies in how the list gets made.

The end-of-season scramble
On many yachts the list is put together in the final weeks of the season by whoever is preparing the specification and negotiating with the yard. That person has to go back through months of notes, emails and conversations, so some items get missed and others are described too loosely to price, at the point when the crew has the least time to help.

Some captains will say their crews already log defects as they go, and many do. It is hard to say how common this is across the fleet, but in our experience that log still tends to live in a spreadsheet or a separate tool, apart from the planned maintenance system. So before the specification goes out, someone has to merge the two and rewrite the items in a form a yard can quote from. The information is handled twice: once when it is found and again under pressure at the end of the season, which opens the door to mistakes and omissions.

“Whatever is left off the refit list, or described too loosely, comes back later as extra work and cost.”

 
Writing it down when it is found
Take a deckhand who notices a sticking door handle in July. It is a one-off job, and it belongs on the refit list just as much as the main engine overhaul the planned maintenance system has scheduled for that winter. The overhaul is already on record. The door handle is only on record if someone writes it down when it is noticed.

Refit will always bring some surprises, because some things only show their condition once they are opened up. What a season-long list reduces is the part of the scope that was known all along but never written down.

Keep the whole list in the planned maintenance system
Engineers raise this with us all the time: defects should be recorded in the planned maintenance system, alongside the maintenance tasks. Most yachts already run one, so their equipment, its history and the work coming due are on record. If every new job were logged there too, tied to the equipment it concerns, and everyone on board, from deckhands to engineers, could add them as they spot them, the whole refit list could be drawn from one place. By the end of the season it would be complete and could go to the yard as it stands.

Because it would be one system for the whole yacht, the list could also carry the financial side. The yard could quote from items that name the exact equipment and price the work with fewer assumptions. The owner’s team could set the budget and track expenses and purchase orders against the same items, and after the yard period the work done would stay recorded against that equipment.

“Engineers raise this with us all the time: defects should be recorded in the planned maintenance system, alongside the maintenance tasks.”

 
Before the next yard period
This matters to both sides of the contract. Every hour the yard and the owner’s team spend clarifying a vague scope, or negotiating work that should have been on the list from the start, is time and money neither of them gets back.

On board and in the office, preparing the list and negotiating with the yard is at the core of a manager’s or captain’s job. Good ones do it carefully, but often with incomplete information and when they have least time to spare.

That is why building the refit list inside the planned maintenance system is what we are now working on at DeepBlue. Whatever the crew notice during the season will be able to go straight onto the list, so when the yard asks for it, it is already written.

Maks Obelšer is chief product officer of DeepBlue, a Monaco-based company that has been developing yacht management software for over 15 years. Its platform is used on more than 500 yachts by over 50 management companies and family offices. Find out more at www.deepblue.app.

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