ESI Marine Surveyor

The course

Ten units, in order

Method and conduct first. The technical walk assumes your prerequisites are done.

Part A · The profession  —  Unit 1

The report is the product

Nobody buys an inspection. They buy a document they can act on.

A surveyor is not paid to look at a boat. Looking at the boat is the raw material. What the client buys, what the underwriter files, what the lender puts in the loan folder and what a court reads three years later is the document. If the document is vague, it does not matter how good the inspection was.

Write for four readers, in this sequence, because each one arrives later and knows less about the day:

The fourth reader is the one who matters most and the one nobody writes for. Every habit taught in this course exists because of that reader.

A conventional report buries findings inside descriptive paragraphs, then repeats some of them in a recommendations list at the back. Ours keeps a single finding register. Each finding gets an ID, and that ID never changes — not when the report is revised, not when an item is corrected, not when the numbering above it shifts.

We compared our format against a published survey by an accredited member of a recognised society. It is a competent report by industry standards. It also defines the word “appears” in its own glossary as meaning a close or complete inspection was not possible — and then uses it throughout the body as though it were a finding.

ESI does not use the word. A point you inspected and confirmed is verified. A point you inspected and could not confirm is unverifiable. A point you never got to is grey, with a reason. Three states, three different places in the report, no ambiguity to hide in.

That rule is not politeness. ESI carries dealer lines. The moment a report says “replace with a [brand] unit”, every finding in the document becomes arguable as sales copy. “Stabiliser system does not achieve the manufacturer's specified roll reduction at survey conditions” is defensible permanently.

Part A · The profession  —  Unit 2

Disclosure, independence and autonomy

A settled arrangement with a settled answer. Say who employs you, how you are paid, and what authority you hold over your own findings.

Marine surveyors are not licensed by any state or federal body, and the societies are voluntary. Surveyors have worked as employees of yards, insurers, builders, dealers and brokerages for decades. It is an established arrangement with an established answer, and that answer is disclosure.

Many clients will choose ESI because the surveyor works in a yard. Somebody who pulls drives, chases stray current and replaces bellows every week reads a boat faster and more accurately than somebody who only ever looks at them. That is an argument in our favour, and it is worth making.

Every ESI survey engagement discloses these in writing, before work starts, in the §0 block the client signs.

A promise of independence is worth what any promise is worth. Ours is built into how the report is produced, which means a client or an underwriter can verify it rather than take it on trust.

1. Severity is derived, not chosen. You supply the standard class and the failure mode; the flag is computed from the matrix. There is no field in which anybody expresses an opinion about severity.
2. Overrides are recorded. Any departure from the derived flag writes the derived flag, the override, a written justification and a second signature.
3. The log is producible. If anyone asks whether findings were adjusted, the answer is a record, not an assurance.
4. Both directions are treated identically. Softening a finding and sharpening one carry exactly the same requirement, because independence means the number is not moved for anybody's benefit.

None of these are unique to a yard-employed surveyor. They are how any competent surveyor works.

The statement at the end of the report is a professional certification. Read it before signing, every time. It states that the facts are true, the opinions are yours, you hold no interest in the vessel, your compensation is not contingent on the outcome, and you personally inspected the boat.

Part A · The profession  —  Unit 3

Responsibility, reliance and liability

What you are on the hook for, and the habit that protects you.

A survey report is addressed to a named client for a stated purpose. That is what reliance means: the named party is entitled to act on it. Third parties generally are not — but they will try, and a report that does not say who may rely on it invites exactly that.

Say it explicitly: who commissioned it, for what purpose, and on what date the vessel was in this condition. A survey is a snapshot. It describes a boat on a day, not a boat forever.

Not perfection. The question asked afterwards is what a reasonably competent surveyor, working to the scope agreed, would have done and reported in the same circumstances.

Very few claims come from a surveyor mis-measuring something. Almost all come from one of these:

1. Something was not inspected, and the report did not say so. The client believed it was covered. This is the big one, and it is why grey discipline is a liability control, not paperwork.
2. Vague language read as reassurance. “Appears serviceable.” “No apparent defects.” The client heard “fine”.
3. Overclaiming from an instrument. A moisture reading reported as a condition. A thermal image reported as a fault. See the unit on non-destructive testing.
4. Scope creep by conversation. Something promised verbally on the dock that never made it into the written scope.
5. No record. The surveyor remembers being careful and cannot show it.

Notice that four of the five are about what was written, not about what was seen.

Photograph more than you need. Photograph what was in the way of the thing you could not inspect — the screwed-down sole, the stacked gear, the locked compartment. That photograph is what makes a grey entry unarguable.

Stop and call the lead when: the HIN does not match the paperwork; you find evidence of undisclosed damage or repair; the gas detector reads positive; you are asked to change a finding; you find something outside your competence; or anybody offers you anything.

Part A · The profession  —  Unit 4

Maritime law and insurance for surveyors

You work for underwriters. Most surveyors never learn what they are actually selling.

Understand which one you are supporting before you write. An agreed-value policy makes your valuation part of the contract. A liability policy makes it almost irrelevant, and the underwriter is reading only your red and orange findings.

1. Underwriting. The report supports acceptance, terms and premium. Only the flags and the value get read.
2. After a loss. The adjuster reads it to establish what condition was present, visible and reported before the loss.
3. Coverage dispute. If a warranty is alleged breached, your findings and the compliance record are the evidence.
4. Subrogation. If the insurer pays and then pursues a third party — a yard, a builder, a previous repairer — your documentation of prior repair and condition can be central.

Three of those four happen after you have forgotten the boat. It is why the field record matters as much as the report.

• Maritime liens. Certain claims — repairs, necessaries, wages, salvage — can attach to the vessel itself and travel with it through a sale. A buyer can inherit them. If you see evidence of unpaid yard work or a vessel under arrest, that is a desk escalation.
• Salvage versus towage. Salvage is voluntary service to a vessel in peril and earns an award against the vessel's value; towage is a contracted service. The distinction changes who owes what after an incident.
• Documentation versus state registration. Federally documented vessels carry an official number permanently affixed inside the hull; state-registered vessels display numbers externally. A mismatch between paperwork and the vessel is a stop-and-escalate.
• General average — rare in yachts but the principle appears in commercial work: a deliberate sacrifice for common safety is shared proportionally.

Part A · The profession  —  Unit 5

Federal regulation and how to read the CFR

Class A findings are federal. If you are going to cite them you have to know where they live and what they actually bind.

The Code of Federal Regulations is the codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by federal agencies. It is organised into 50 titles by subject. Agencies write rules under authority granted by statute; the statute is in the U.S. Code, the rule is in the CFR.

• Title 33 — Navigation and Navigable Waters. Chapter I is the Coast Guard. Subchapter S, Boating Safety, is where recreational vessel regulation lives.
• Title 46 — Shipping. Inspected and commercial vessels, licensing, and equipment approval. Relevant when you move into commercial work or a vessel carries a Certificate of Inspection.

Get that backwards and you have written a confident, checkable, wrong citation — which is worse than no citation, because when the reader checks it every other citation in your report becomes suspect.

Federal regulation is class A. Non-compliance is unlawful rather than merely substandard, which is why absent and non-functional at class A derive straight to red. That weighting is the reason the manufacturer-versus-carriage distinction matters so much: mis-classing a builder requirement as an owner violation puts a red flag on a boat that has not broken any law.

Part A · The profession  —  Unit 6

Washington State law

The state that pays us. One statute here creates a survey market by law — and one thing everyone assumes is required is not.

This sits in the Derelict and Abandoned Vessel Act. The legislature's purpose was to stop old, large, unseaworthy vessels being passed to owners who cannot maintain them and then abandoned at public expense — so the mechanism is aimed at the transfer, not at the boat.

RCW 79.100.150(4): unless the department's rules provide otherwise, the inspection must be a formal marine survey conducted by a third party to the transaction, and must include at minimum a conclusion relating to seaworthiness, an estimate of fair market value, and where applicable an estimate of the anticipated cost of repairs to return the vessel to seaworthiness.

The implementing rule, WAC 332-08-123, goes considerably further and effectively specifies the report. It defines “seaworthy” as the vessel and its equipment being physically fit and in full working order, able to encounter and withstand the ordinary perils of the sea during its contemplated use, and suitable for its intended purpose.

RCW 79.100.150(2): if the inspection finds the vessel not seaworthy and its value is less than the anticipated cost of returning it to seaworthiness, the owner may not sell or transfer it unless it is first repaired to a seaworthy state, or it is sold for scrap, restoration, salvage or another use that removes it from state waters, to a person holding a business licence whom a reasonable seller would believe capable of and intending to do so.

RCW 79.100.170 applies to the same class of vessel — over thirty-five feet and more than forty years old. The buyer must secure a marine insurance policy prior to or concurrent with taking ownership, with a term of at least twelve months, coverage of at least $300,000 unless the department provides otherwise by rule, and coverage for removal of the vessel if it sinks and for a pollution event. Proof goes to the transferor and, where applicable, to Licensing or Revenue.

• The transferor has an affirmative duty to ensure the buyer has it.
• Selling anyway is permitted — but the seller then assumes secondary liability under RCW 79.100.060 if the vessel is later abandoned or becomes derelict before the next transfer.
• Failing to secure the policy, or cancelling it inside the first twelve months without replacing it, is a misdemeanor.

The same secondary-liability consequence attaches to failing to obtain the survey at all.

• Chapter 88.02 RCW — vessel registration and certificates of title. The registration status drives whether 79.100.150 applies at all.
• Chapter 84.40 RCW — listing of personal property for tax. The alternative trigger in 79.100.150(1)(b)(ii).
• Chapter 79.100 RCW — the Derelict and Abandoned Vessel Act generally, including the secondary liability provision at RCW 79.100.060 that both of the above hang off.
• Chapter 332-08 WAC, Part II — DNR's rules for the transfer inspection: 332-08-122 requirement and secondary liability, 332-08-123 minimum criteria, 332-08-124 documentation procedure.
• RCW 79A.60 — regulation of recreational vessels, including the definition of “vessel” used by the CO sticker statute.

The binding condition is third party to the transaction. ESI cannot do the statutory inspection on a vessel ESI is buying, selling or brokering. It can do it where the client is the seller, the buyer, a lien holder, a broker, or an associated financial or insurance provider — DNR names all five as permissible recipients of the report.

1. Survey within 30 days before transfer. Do the work, run the instruments, produce the report to the WAC 332-08-123 contents.
2. Report goes to the client. You are not the filer. Your product is the report.
3. The seller files it with DNR — hard copy of the report plus the department's Acknowledgement Form carrying original notarised signatures of both seller and buyer, to the Aquatic Resources Division, Derelict Vessel Removal Program, MS 47027, Olympia WA 98504-7027.
4. DNR acknowledges receipt within ten business days — and that is all it does.
5. Buyer secures the insurance and gives proof to the seller and, where applicable, to Licensing or Revenue.

A current USCG Certificate of Inspection is an acceptable alternative form of condition determination, so an inspected commercial vessel does not need this survey.

There is no formal “condemnation” certificate in Washington small-craft practice. What exists is the economic test in RCW 79.100.150(2), and a survey is what triggers it.

That second row is the condemnation survey in all but name, and it is the document a yard needs when a boat has to go to the crusher rather than to another owner. It requires two defensible numbers from you — market value and estimated cost to return to seaworthiness — and the comparison between them is what does the legal work. Show your reasoning for both.

DNR also runs a Vessel Turn-In Program for owners who want to surrender a vessel rather than sell it. Where a boat plainly fails the economic test, that is worth telling the client about; it is usually the outcome the statute is trying to produce.

ESI is a moorage operator as well as a surveyor, so this chapter is ours twice over.

• A private moorage facility may take reasonable measures — chains, locks, or removal from the water — to secure a vessel whose owner has failed to pay charges after notice.
• A secured vessel not released within 45 days of notifying the owner is conclusively presumed abandoned.
• The operator may then sell it at public sale to the highest bidder for cash, with at least 20 days' notice to the owner and any lien holder, stating time, place, vessel description and charges owed.
• Proceeds go to superior liens, then charges, then other liens in priority, and any balance to the owner. If nobody buys it, or it is not removed within ten days, title reverts to the operator.
• A deficiency claim is available, capped at the previous six months' moorage.

Federal parallel: 33 CFR Part 177, Correction of Especially Hazardous Conditions, is the Coast Guard's authority to order an unsafe vessel out of use — 177.04 order of unsafe condition, 177.05 action to correct. It is a use-termination power on the water, not a title mechanism, and it does not do what RCW 79.100.150 does. See Unit 5.

All citations retrieved 2026-09-05 from leg.wa.gov. Confirm currency before relying on them; the legislature amends chapter 79.100 regularly — RCW 79.100.150 and .170 were both last amended in 2020.

Part A · The profession  —  Unit 7

Running a survey practice

Chapman gives this 29 hours. It is also the unit a franchisee needs more than an employee does.

Most bad surveys are sold badly before anyone reaches the boat. Establish, in writing:

• What kind of survey. Pre-purchase condition and value, insurance condition, damage, appraisal, or limited-scope inspection. These are different products with different prices.
• Who the client is, and that they are the one instructing you. Not the broker acting for them.
• Whether the vessel will be hauled, and who is arranging and paying for it.
• Whether there will be a sea trial, who operates the vessel, and who is aboard.
• Access. Will tanks be accessible, lockers emptied, the sole liftable? Say what you need before the day, in writing, and record what you got.
• Deadline. Survey contingency dates drive everything and nobody mentions them until day three.

• Price the job, not the hour. Clients cannot evaluate hours and will shop them.
• Vessel length is the usual basis; adjust for construction, complexity, twin engines, sail, and travel.
• Never price on value, on outcome, or on a percentage of anything. That is prohibited and it is disclaimed in the certification you sign.
• Charge for the sea trial and the haul-out attendance as separate line items so the client can see what they bought.
• Late-cancellation and travel policies, stated up front. You will need them.

1. Set expectations at the enquiry. What you will do, what you will not, when they get the report, and what it will look like.
2. Do not give a verbal verdict on the dock. The client will remember the sentence, not the report. Say the findings are going in the document.
3. Deliver on time. A late report on a contingency deadline is a business failure regardless of quality.
4. Walk them through it once. A fifteen-minute call after delivery prevents most misunderstandings and almost all complaints.
5. Do not negotiate findings. You will correct an error of fact. You will not soften a classification because someone is unhappy.

An ESI-certified surveyor operating elsewhere carries the method, the forms, the binding map and the name. What they are accountable for is running it as taught.

Note the disclosure travels with the method. A franchisee who also runs a yard is in exactly ESI's position and handles it exactly the same way: state it, in writing, before engagement.

The agreement metric is what makes that enforceable at a distance. It is the only part of this system that can tell head office, without visiting, whether a surveyor two thousand miles away is still running the method.

Part B · The method  —  Unit 8

Standards: what they are and what they are not

The citation is what makes a finding defensible. It is not what makes it true.

This is why the field form carries the binding pre-attached to each point. The lookup is done once, at form-build time, by somebody sitting down with the library — not by you in a bilge with a flashlight. Where a designation on the form is marked unconfirmed, it is not yet safe to put in a delivered report.

The class is half of the severity derivation. Getting it wrong moves a finding one or two flags, which is why it is drilled in the classification unit.

ABYC is a consensus process. Committees of interested parties — builders, manufacturers, surveyors, insurers — agree wording. It is not an experimental result, and the people in the room have commercial interests.

Standards lag technology, and some things nobody has written down. Lithium retrofits, novel composites, aftermarket electronics integration. The finding still gets made.

1. Manufacturer specification where one exists. Record where you got the figure.
2. Measured data — your reading against a stated limit, with the instrument and setting.
3. A stated ESI-method observation — name the criterion and say why it exists. The reader has never seen it before, so explain it.

Part B · The method  —  Unit 9

Failure-mode classification

You never pick a flag. You pick the mode, and the flag follows.

On an ordinary report, severity is a judgement call dressed as a category. One surveyor's “recommend servicing” is another's “requires immediate attention”, and the reader cannot tell whether two reports disagree about the boat or about the writer.

Here the flag falls out of a matrix. You supply two things — which class of requirement is at stake and how the item failed — and the flag is computed. That is the repeatability mechanism, and it is the only reason we can publish an agreement figure.

Six states. Five severities and one that is not a severity at all.

Classes A and the CFR are covered in Unit 5; consensus standards and citation discipline in Unit 8.

Class across the top, failure mode down the side. Find the cell, read the flag. This is the same matrix the field form computes from — you are not memorising it to apply by hand, you are learning it so you can tell when a result looks wrong.

Absent versus non-compliant. A single clamp where two are required. The joint exists and functions, so it is non-compliant installation. Absent is for a required item that is not there at all — no CO detector, no bonding conductor, no cotter pin. At class B the two derive to different flags, so this is the error that moves a finding between red and orange.

Unverifiable versus grey. Both mean you do not know, and they are recorded in different places. Grey means you did not inspect it — it is a scope statement. Unverifiable means you inspected and could not confirm — it is a finding.

Degraded versus approaching. Both require a limit to exist — that is the part people skip. Degraded means outside a stated limit, and you cite the limit. Approaching means measurably inside it and trending. “Looks close” is not a measurement. With no limit and no number you do not have approaching; you have degraded against a stated manufacturer criterion, or you have unverifiable.

But green asserts inspected and verified compliant against the cited standard, and it carries the same evidentiary burden as a defect. A bilge pump that ran on test but whose capacity you never established is not green. It is unverifiable.

Part B · The method  —  Unit 10

The kit, and how to actually run it

The commonest weakness in this trade is a surveyor carrying instruments he cannot operate. This unit is operation, not theory.

What goes in the bag, every time. A survey stopped because you did not bring something is a return visit you are not being paid for.

1. Function check. Switch on, hold in free air. It should read at or near its floor. If it does not, the meter is faulty or the pad is contaminated.
2. Establish the dry baseline. Find an area of the same construction that must be dry — typically topsides well above the boot top. Take several readings, record the value and the location. Every reading you take afterwards is reported against this.
3. Technique. Full pad flat on the surface, even pressure, no rocking. Hold still for the meter to settle. Do not slide it across the surface while reading.
4. Work a grid. Systematic spacing, not a hunt for trouble. Move from known-dry toward the suspect area so you see the gradient.
5. Mark and record. Chalk or tape the highs as you go, then come back and record each with its location. Photograph the meter against the surface with the reading visible.
6. Record the context: meter, scale, dry baseline, hours since haul, weather.

• Know your depth modes. Most have a shallow setting reading roughly the skin and gelcoat, and a deep setting reading into laminate and core. They answer different questions and routinely disagree. Record which you used.
• Zero on air, then on the dry reference. Same discipline as the contact meter.
• It must sit flat. Curvature, a gap under the pad, or a textured non-skid surface all give erratic or falsely low readings. On curved sections say so rather than pretending the number is good.
• Sweep slowly. The instrument needs dwell time; a fast pass reads nothing useful.
• Confirm before flagging. Mark a high, then come back with the contact meter and the hammer. One non-contact high on its own is a lead, not a finding.

1. The right hammer. Phenolic or hard plastic head, light — a few ounces. Never steel on gelcoat.
2. Hold it loosely and let it bounce. You are not driving it. A loose wrist gives a consistent, repeatable strike; a tight grip damps the return and changes the tone.
3. Consistent drop height and rhythm. Inconsistent technique produces inconsistent tone, which is indistinguishable from a defect.
4. Start on known-good structure so your ear has a reference, then work outward.
5. Grid it. Roughly a hand's width apart over open panel, tightening as soon as the tone changes.
6. Find the boundary. When you hear a change, work around it until you have the edge, then tape the outline.
7. Photograph with a scale and record the dimensions. “An area approximately 14 by 20 inches on the port side deck, outboard of the forward hatch” is a finding. “Some softness” is not.

1. Set emissivity for the material — painted GRP around 0.95. Bare or polished metal is low and unreliable; put a strip of matt tape on it and image the tape.
2. Set reflected apparent temperature and ambient. Record both.
3. Focus. An out-of-focus thermal image is not measurable, and many people never notice because it still looks like a picture.
4. Get square to the surface. Shallow angles pick up reflections — including you.
5. Load electrical circuits and let them settle for a good while before imaging. A cold panel tells you nothing.
6. Adjust the span. If the temperature scale is set too wide everything looks uniform. Narrow it around the range of interest and the pattern appears.
7. Capture the visual image too, framed the same, so the report reader can tell what they are looking at.
8. Work in ΔT against an identical adjacent component and record both temperatures.

• Distance-to-spot ratio. A 12:1 instrument at twelve inches is averaging a one-inch circle; at four feet it is averaging four inches and your hot spot has disappeared into the average. Get close.
• Perpendicular to the surface, and mind the same emissivity problem as the imager.
• Take a set, not a reading. Every cylinder on the manifold, every riser, every bearing — record them all so the odd one has something to be odd against.

1. Prove the meter before you trust it. Read a known source — a battery you have just measured, a live outlet with the receptacle tester — before you use it to declare something dead or faulty.
2. Right function, right range, right jacks. Current on the voltage jacks is how meters and hands get damaged.
3. Voltage drop is measured under load, across the conductor, with the circuit working. An open-circuit reading tells you nothing about drop.
4. Ripple: AC volts, probes across the DC bus, engine running at charging rpm. Record millivolts and rpm.
5. Continuity for bonding: your leads have resistance. Short the probes, note the lead resistance, and subtract it — or you will report a bonding fault that is actually your test leads.

1. Clean the posts. A conductance test through corrosion tests the corrosion.
2. Enter the battery's rated CCA from the label. Without it the result is meaningless.
3. Remove surface charge — rest it, or apply a brief load. Straight off a charger, a bad battery passes.
4. Test at the posts, not the switch or the bus bar, or you are testing the cable.
5. Record state of charge and state of health separately, and the temperature if it is extreme.

1. Silver/silver-chloride electrode over the side, well immersed, clear of the hull.
2. Meter negative to the electrode, positive to the bonding system.
3. Let it stabilise. Readings drift for a while before settling. Reading too early is the classic error.
4. Take readings at several locations along the hull and record each position.
5. Record the electrode type. Readings from different reference types are not comparable, and a number without its electrode is unusable.

1. Warm up in clean air, away from the vessel, so it zeroes on genuinely clean air.
2. Bump test against a known source and record that you did. An un-bumped detector is an unverified instrument.
3. Know the alarm setpoint, and know that these instruments indicate presence rather than measure quantity.
4. Sniff before anything is ventilated, and sniff low — bilge, under the sole, bottom of the gas locker.
5. Move slowly. Sweeping fast past a source misses it.

• Clean the lens and check the light before you go in. Most bad borescope work is a dirty lens.
• Know the working length and how the tip articulates before you commit it to a cylinder or a void.
• Record video, not stills. You can review video afterwards; you cannot re-inspect a still you framed badly.
• Orient yourself — note the entry point and how far in you are, or the footage is unreadable later.
• Never force it, and never insert it anywhere you cannot retrieve it from.

• Needs a clean, bare, sound surface. Paint, rust scale and coatings ruin the reading — prepare a spot, with permission.
• Couplant between probe and surface, every time.
• Set the material velocity for the alloy being measured, and calibrate on a step wedge of known thickness.
• Take a grid of readings, not one. Report the minimum and the mean, and say where the minimum was.
• Watch for double-echo errors on heavily corroded plate.

• Engine at operating temperature, throttle held open, all injectors or glow plugs removed, and the same number of cranking revolutions for every cylinder. Change any of those and the numbers are not comparable.
• Leakdown: piston at top dead centre on compression, crankshaft held. Then listen — air at the intake means the intake valve, at the exhaust means the exhaust valve, at the crankcase breather means rings, and bubbles in the coolant mean the head gasket.
• Record every cylinder, not just the low one. The spread matters more than any single figure.

Part B · The method  —  Unit 11

What the instruments cannot tell you

You can now run them. This is the unit about what they still will not establish.

What it actually measures: not water. It measures a dielectric or conductive property of what is under the pad, and infers moisture from it. That distinction is the whole unit.

• Comparative, never absolute. A number alone is not a finding. Establish a baseline on known-dry laminate of the same construction, record it, and report every reading against it.
• It cannot tell water from metal. Backing plates, foil-faced insulation, tank walls, wiring and wet paint all read as wet laminate.
• Record the scale and the meter. Meters do not share a scale. “22” means nothing on its own.
• Non-contact meters: record the depth mode. Shallow reads gelcoat and skin; deep reads laminate and core. They answer different questions and they disagree. A report that does not say which was used cannot be repeated.
• Record hours since haul. A bottom just out of the water reads high everywhere. Without the elapsed time the reading is indefensible.

What it actually detects: a change in acoustic response caused by disbond, void, or a change in what is behind the skin. Not strength, and not water.

• Plastic or phenolic head only. Steel on gelcoat makes the defect you came to find.
• Listen for a change in tone, not an absolute tone. Tone shifts with thickness, core type, framing and backing plates — all of them normal.
• Consistent grid, force and drop height. Inconsistent technique gives inconsistent tone and an indefensible finding.
• Mark, photograph and dimension anything dull. “Some softness” is not a finding.

What it actually measures: apparent surface temperature, inferred from infrared radiation. Surface only. It does not see inside anything.

• An image without emissivity and reflected temperature is a picture, not data. Record both, every time.
• Emissivity for the material. Painted GRP is near 0.95; bare or polished metal is low and unreliable — tape a target and image that.
• Load the circuit before imaging electrical. A cold panel proves only that nothing was drawing current.
• Work in ΔT against an identical adjacent component. The difference is the finding, not the absolute number.
• Sun loading and reflections produce false hot spots. Shade it or image it early.

• Conductance battery tester — meaningless without the battery's rated CCA entered. Remove surface charge first; testing off a charger passes bad batteries. Test at the posts, not the switch. Record state of charge and state of health separately.
• AC ripple on the DC bus — meter on AC volts across the bus at charging rpm. Elevated ripple means failing alternator diodes. Record the millivolts and the rpm. Record it when it passes, too: that is a green with a measurement behind it.
• Half-cell / reference electrode — gives potential at a point, in that water, at that temperature, at that moment. Record the electrode type and every location; readings from different electrode types are not comparable. Without it, the bonding system is unverifiable — and you do not give an opinion on it anyway.

• Bump-test before use. An un-bumped detector is an unverified instrument and anything it tells you is unverifiable.
• Sniff before you ventilate. Open the boat up first and the evidence is gone. This is the most commonly wasted test on a survey.
• Sniff low. Gasoline vapour and propane are heavier than air — bilge, under the sole, bottom of the LPG locker.
• A positive reading is a stop-work: no electrical operation, people off, call the desk.

Instrument settings and per-instrument checklists are carried on the field form at §A2. Fill that section in before you touch the boat.

Part B · The method  —  Unit 12

Thoroughness: the route, and grey discipline

The hardest habit to build and the easiest to lose under schedule pressure.

1. Start at the top and work down. Rig, then deck, then topsides, then waterline, then bottom. Water travels downward; work the same direction and you find the source rather than the stain.
2. Start at the bow and work back. Every section, every compartment, the same direction every time. A route you repeat is a route you can prove you completed.
3. Use your tools wisely. Where ESI already has a tool, use it. A number off the Go/No-Go tool or the wire calculator beats an opinion and survives a challenge.
4. Finish as you go. Write the finding at the point and photograph it while standing there. A survey completed on the boat is a report that never needs a second visit.

Count before you check. Count the below-waterline penetrations before you inspect any of them. You cannot report on what you never enumerated, and a count is the only way you know when you are done.

Enumerating what you did not inspect, with reasons, is the single hardest habit in this trade. It feels like advertising a failure. It is the opposite.

It is also the hardest thing for a competitor to copy, because honest grey exposes how little they open. A three-page grey list next to their two-line limitations paragraph is not a weakness in our report. It is the comparison.

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 13

Hull materials and how each one fails

Five construction materials, five completely different sets of evidence. Chapman gives this 53 hours.

• Solid versus cored. Cored below the waterline behaves very differently from solid. Establish which, and where the transition is.
• Core type. Balsa absorbs and spreads water along the grain; foam holds it locally. That changes how far the damage travels from a single leak.
• Osmotic blistering — gelcoat versus laminate depth. You cannot tell without opening one, and opening one is destructive testing.
• Delamination between skin and core, or between laminate plies. Sounding finds it; moisture alone does not.
• Print-through and fairing can hide a repair. Look in raking light.
• Era matters. Early production boats were often heavily over-laminated solid; late-70s to 80s hulls thinned out and cored more. Know roughly what you are looking at before you judge thickness.

• Rot lives where fresh water sits and air does not move. Under fittings, end grain, behind ceiling, at chainplates, under the mast step.
• Probe with a blunt awl, gently, and only with permission. Firm timber resists; punky timber gives. Excessive probing is destructive.
• Fastener sickness — black staining around a fastener where corrosion products have attacked the wood. Common where iron meets oak.
• Electrolysis around underwater metals softens wood locally — look for whitened, stringy timber near through-hulls and keel bolts.
• A dry-stored wooden boat can look terrible and take up fine. Say what you saw and what it means; do not pronounce.

• It corrodes from the inside out. The topsides can look perfect while the bilge and tank tops are wasting.
• Under insulation is the worst case. Sprayfoam holds moisture against plate and hides everything. If you cannot get behind it, that is grey with a very clear reason.
• Heat-affected zones at welds corrode preferentially.
• Pitting under sound-looking coatings. Tap suspect areas; a hollow or dead note is a lead.
• Plate thickness can only be established with ultrasonic measurement. Without a UT gauge and access, wastage is unverifiable — and on a steel hull that is a substantial limitation to declare.

• Galvanic attack at dissimilar-metal contact. Stainless fittings, copper alloys, and copper-based antifouling are all aggressive to aluminium.
• Crevice corrosion under fittings and in gaps where oxygen is excluded.
• Poulticing — corrosion product lifting paint from beneath, forming a white powdery blister. Very characteristic.
• Weld cracking, particularly at hard points and where a fitting was added later.
• Stray current is catastrophic on aluminium, far faster than on other materials. Anode consumption rate matters more here than anywhere.

• Rust staining is the primary tell — the armature corroding inside and expanding.
• Spalling and drummy areas from voids in the original plastering.
• Build quality varies enormously; many were amateur-built. Ask for build records and record that you asked.
• Very difficult to survey meaningfully with handheld methods. Be honest about that in the scope declaration.

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 14

Surveying the hull, deck and structure

Your composites course taught you how to build and repair a laminate. This teaches you how to read one that somebody else built, twenty years ago.

The most common thing you will be asked about, and the one people get wrong in both directions.

Do not write “blisters present”. That sentence is worthless to everyone downstream. Record four things: size, density, distribution, and depth.

• Size — measure a representative sample, largest and typical.
• Density — count per square foot in a defined area, not an impression.
• Distribution — whole bottom, below waterline only, one panel, around fittings.
• Depth — in the gelcoat, or into the laminate. These are completely different findings.

Blisters in gelcoat are a coating problem. Blisters into the laminate with a sour smell are a structural conversation. You cannot tell them apart without opening one, and opening one is destructive testing — which needs the owner's written permission through the desk.

This is an ESI section and it is where an experienced eye earns the fee. You are reading the vessel's history from what somebody tried to hide.

1. Colour breaks and fairing. Gelcoat that does not match, a slightly different sheen, a fair patch in an otherwise flat panel.
2. Grinding shadows. Under raking light, a ground-and-refilled area reads as a shallow depression with a feathered edge.
3. Interior evidence. Look inside the same location. New tabbing, fresh resin smell, a bulkhead re-bonded, a patch of unpainted laminate.
4. Fastener mismatch. One replaced fitting on an otherwise original boat means something happened there.
5. Ask what it was. Undisclosed repair to a structural area is escalation-to-the-desk territory, not a yellow finding.

• Sound the whole deck, on a grid, at consistent force. Not a spot check where you expect trouble.
• Deck hardware — through-bolted with backing plates, or screwed into core? Where you can see the underside, look. Where you cannot, say so.
• Bulkhead tabbing — separation at the hull is a structural finding. Look for a hairline shadow along the tabbing edge and for movement under load.
• Hard spots — a bulkhead or stringer ending abruptly transfers load into a point. Look for a corresponding mark outside.
• Stringers and floors — crushed, saturated or detached. Tap them. A stringer that sounds hollow along part of its run is detached from the hull.
• Chainplate structure on a sailing vessel — the load path into the hull is the finding, not the plate.

Construction theory and repair method: Composites 1 and Composites 2. This unit assumes them and does not repeat them.

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 15

Stability, buoyancy and load

IIMS sells this as its own unit. It is the physics behind most of the findings that actually sink boats.

A partly filled tank, a flooded bilge or water on deck moves as the vessel heels. That moving mass adds to the heeling force at exactly the moment the vessel needs to right itself. Its effect grows with the width of the free surface, sharply — a shallow flood across a wide compartment is far worse than a deep one in a narrow tank.

1. Flybridge, hardtop, tower or arch added later. Weight high, often heavier than it looks, frequently with no engineering behind it.
2. Davits and a tender carried high aft. Weight high and far outboard of the original design case.
3. A large battery bank moved — up, or aft, or both, during a lithium conversion.
4. Ballast removed or altered. Rare but catastrophic. Look for evidence in the bilge.
5. Cockpit lockers that are not watertight, or drains blanked off during a refit.
6. Deck penetrations added low — a new vent, exhaust or transducer that lowers the downflooding point.
7. Sustained overloading — a boat sitting well below its lines with gear aboard.

• Walk the vessel and find the lowest opening that cannot self-drain: cockpit lockers, engine vents, dorade boxes, companionway sill, fuel and tank vents, anchor locker.
• Check cockpit drains are open and adequately sized, and that scuppers are not blanked.
• Check the companionway can be secured, and that the boards are aboard and fit.
• A locker lid that does not seal is a downflooding point. So is a vent that faces forward with no baffle.

Any conclusion about a vessel's actual righting ability requires a stability assessment by a naval architect. Where you have a real concern, that is the recommendation — not a qualified opinion of your own.

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 16

Surveying below the waterline

Through-hulls, bonding, corrosion and running gear. The systems that sink boats and the ones that eat them.

Count them first. Write the number down before you inspect any of them. You cannot report on what you never enumerated, and the count is the only way you know you are finished.

Then, at every single one:

1. Operate it. Full travel, by hand, no tools. A valve that will not move is NON-FUNCTIONAL. A valve you did not operate is GREY — not a pass.
2. Material. Plain brass below the waterline dezincifies. It goes pink, then porous, then it fails. Test suspect fittings by scraping to bright metal — pink is the tell.
3. Mounting and backing. A seacock must take a load applied at its inboard end. Fibreglass backing, not plywood that has gone soft.
4. Hose, rating and clamps. Two clamps where the hose end allows, all-metal band and screw, housings offset. Perforated bands are not acceptable.
5. Bonding conductor where the installation uses one.
6. Emergency plug available at the fitting.

Three mechanisms, three different findings, three different people who need to fix them.

• Alloy to the water. Zinc salt, aluminium brackish and general purpose, magnesium fresh only. Magnesium on a salt-water boat depletes fast and can over-protect. Read the casting mark; do not guess from colour.
• Consumption. Record a percentage. Replace at roughly half; once mostly gone, the housing is next in line.
• Electrical path. The most common way an anode job fails is a mounting face that was never cleaned to bright metal. A new anode with no continuity protects nothing.
• Trim tab anode — mark its position before removal; it is set to trim out steering torque.

You cannot form an opinion on cathodic protection by looking at it. Protection is a measured potential, and measuring it takes a silver / silver-chloride reference cell in the water.

Shaft Go / No-Go Tool Drivetrain Measurement

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 17

Surveying electrical systems

The system that generates the most findings on almost every boat, and the one owners have most often modified themselves.

Because it is the system owners modify. A boat gets a new chartplotter, an inverter, a fridge, LED lighting and a lithium bank over twenty years, each fitted by somebody different, none of them documented. You are surveying an archaeology of good intentions.

1. Start at the bank. Secured against shifting and against a heavy roll, positive terminals insulated, nothing stored above them that can fall across the posts, ventilation appropriate to the chemistry.
2. Over-current protection at the source. Is there any? A battery switch is not over-current protection. If the only thing between the bank and the boat is a switch, the mode is ABSENT and at class B that is red.
3. Check the AIC rating. The interrupt rating has to exceed what the bank can actually deliver. This is the one people miss on lithium and large AGM installations — a fuse that cannot break the available fault current is decoration.
4. Conductor sizing. Both ampacity and voltage drop; take the larger wire. Length is the round trip, positive plus return — halving it is the commonest field error.
5. Support, routing and chafe. Where conductors pass through structure, and where they cross anything that moves.
6. Connections. No wire nuts, no twist-on connectors, no tape splices. Ring or captive spade terminals on studs.
7. Panel. Labelled, protected, and the labels actually matching the circuits.

Wire Calculator — put the resulting AWG and the drop figure in the measurement field.

• State of charge and state of health are different findings. A discharged good battery and a charged dead one look identical on a voltmeter.
• Conductance testing requires the rated CCA entered, surface charge removed, and testing at the posts. Off a charger, a bad battery passes.
• Ripple test. Meter on AC volts across the DC bus, engine at charging rpm. Elevated AC on a DC system means failing alternator diodes. Record the millivolts and the rpm.
• Record the ripple figure when it passes. That is a GREEN with a measurement behind it — and almost no incumbent report contains one.
• Lithium. Confirm the charging system was reconfigured when the bank was converted. A drop-in swap with the original alternator and regulator is a finding, not an upgrade.

AC is where electrocution and galvanic corrosion both live, and it is the section most likely to have been extended by somebody working from house-wiring habits.

• Shore power inlet and cord — heat damage at the inlet is a serious finding. Look at the pins.
• Galvanic isolator or isolation transformer — present, and is it the right one for the installation.
• ELCI / main disconnect, reverse polarity indication, GFCI in wet locations.
• AC and DC separated, not run in a common bundle.
• Generator transfer — can shore and generator be connected simultaneously? That is a serious finding.
• House-wiring tells — solid-core residential cable, domestic outlets, junction boxes with wire nuts, extension leads run permanently.

System theory: Marine Electrical 1 and Electrical Tech 2. This unit is about finding and classifying, not designing.

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 18

Surveying propulsion, drivetrain and exhaust

Where the C&V stops and the engine survey starts — and everything around the engine that is still yours.

But a great deal around the engine is not in the engine survey and remains yours:

• Engine mounts, bearers and the structure they sit on
• Alignment evidence and coupling condition
• The entire wet exhaust run
• Compartment ventilation, guarding of rotating parts, and controls
• Fuel supply from the tank to the engine — that is the fuel section
• Hours verification against evidence

This mirrors the market: in the benchmark survey, a separate engine surveyor attended and produced a separate report. That is exactly the work ESI already sells, which is why the machinery certification ships first.

A high-consequence system that is easy to survey and routinely skipped. Failure floods the engine or fills the accommodation with CO.

1. Follow the whole run, engine to transom, with a light. Every hose, every clamp, every support.
2. Injection point height above the static waterline, and whether the run can siphon back.
3. Low spots that trap water between the injection point and the transom.
4. Support — the hose must not be carrying the muffler.
5. Riser and mixing elbow. The classic failure: internal corrosion invisible from outside. IR the riser under load and compare bank to bank; a cold section where the opposite side is hot is a flow problem.
6. Lagging on dry sections. Exposed dry exhaust is a burn and fire risk.
7. Soot or salt staining at any joint means a leak, and a leak in a wet exhaust is a CO path.

• Mounts — collapsed rubber, rust-jacked adjusting studs, one mount doing all the work. Look at the height of each adjuster; a wildly different one means the engine has been moved to chase something.
• Bearers — the structure under the mounts. Softness, cracked tabbing, oil-soaked plywood.
• Alignment evidence — you are not aligning it, you are looking for the signs it is out: coupling face marks, a shaft seal that leaks only under way, wear pattern on the cutless, vibration at specific rpm.
• Record the rpm at which vibration appears. The conditions are the diagnosis.

• Oil analysis is trend data. One sample from an unknown service history establishes very little. It is strongest when you have a series. Say which you have.
• Compression and leakdown tell you about cylinder sealing on the day. They do not tell you remaining life.
• Borescope shows only what is in the light cone. It is excellent evidence of what you saw and no evidence at all about what you did not.
• None of these open the engine. They narrow the question. Report them as measurements with their limits stated.

Drive and engine service method: Service Tech 1, I/O Level 1 and Level 2.

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 19

Surveying fuel, gas, ventilation and fire protection

Fire, explosion and CO. The findings that stop a boat being insured.

First thing recorded, because it determines what binds every point below. Diesel and gasoline are different standards, different ventilation requirements and different consequences.

• Tanks — material, support, and whether they can be inspected at all. A tank you cannot see is grey; say so.
• The classic: aluminium tanks foamed in place, corroding from the outside where the foam holds moisture against them. You cannot see it and you cannot rule it out — record it as unverifiable with the reason.
• Fill and vent — arranged so fuel cannot be taken aboard into the bilge, vent discharging outboard clear of openings.
• Hose — correct type marking, within date where marked, no soft or weeping sections. Fill hose cracking at the bends is extremely common and easy to miss.
• Shut-off at the tank, accessible without dismantling.
• Filters and separators — mounted so they can be serviced without spilling into the bilge, and labelled with service date, hours and next due.
• Anti-siphon where the tank can siphon to the engine.
• Smell. Fuel odour in a compartment is a finding even when you cannot find the source. Record it.

1. Sniff before you ventilate. If you open the boat up first, the evidence is gone. This is the most commonly wasted test on a survey.
2. Bump-test the detector before use and record it. An un-bumped detector is an unverified instrument.
3. Sniff low — bottom of the locker, the bilge, under the sole. Propane is heavier than air.
4. Locker — vapour-tight to the interior, opening only to the atmosphere, drain at the very bottom discharging overboard above the waterline. Check where the drain actually exits.
5. Solenoid at the bottle, with a remote switch and a working indicator.
6. Tubing continuous, supported, no joints inside accommodation.
7. Pressure-drop test is the acceptance test. A soap check is not. If you did not do it, that is grey with a reason — not a pass.

• Portable extinguishers — number, type, condition and service date against the carriage requirement for the vessel.
• Fixed suppression in the engine space — charge, certification date, and whether it is sized for the compartment volume.
• Engine shutdown interlock — does discharging the system stop the engine and the blower? An extinguisher discharging into a running engine is being pumped straight out.
• CO detectors — one in each accommodation space with a sleeping berth, listed for marine use, within service life, and tested. Present but silent on test is NON-FUNCTIONAL, which at class B is red.
• A household hardware-store unit is a finding, not a detector.

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 20

Surveying the rig and spars

Sail only. No ESI course sits under this one, so it is taught here in full.

Stainless standing rigging fails by fatigue and by crevice corrosion inside the swage, and neither is reliably visible from the deck. Because of that, age is the primary criterion in insurance practice, and condition is secondary.

• Establish the year the rigging was last replaced. Ask, and look for evidence — invoices, a date on a swage, mismatched terminals.
• If the age cannot be established, that is a finding in itself and it is UNVERIFIABLE, not a pass. Underwriters commonly require replacement at an age threshold; confirm the specific requirement with the desk rather than quoting a number from memory.
• Record what you did establish and how you established it.

Do not let “rig appeared serviceable” cover a mast you never climbed. A dismasting claim will be read against exactly that sentence.

• Halyards and sheets — chafe at the exit and at spreader ends, glazing from load, core showing.
• Winches — operate each one in both speeds, check the pawls engage, look for mounting movement.
• Sails — inventory them and record condition; UV strip, stitching at the leech and foot, batten pockets. This is an inventory and condition note, not a sailmaker's assessment, and say so.
• Boom, vang and gooseneck — corrosion at fittings, cracked welds, reefing gear complete.

Part C · The vessel  —  Unit 21

Steering, ground tackle, safety equipment and the sea trial

The systems that get skimmed, and the one hour where the boat tells you the truth.

Safety-critical. Findings here do not get deferred to the next haul.

• Lock to lock, at rest and under way. Stiffness, notchiness or a dead spot is a finding.
• Hydraulic — leaks at the ram and helm, fluid level, air in the system (spongy feel, lost motion).
• Cable — condition, bend radius, end fittings, and whether the run is chafing anywhere.
• Retaining hardware. Every clevis, every cotter pin. A missing pin is ABSENT and safety-critical.
• Rudder stops present and taking load on the structure, not on the ram.
• Emergency tiller — present, accessible without emptying a locker, and it actually fits. Try it. “An emergency tiller is aboard” is not the same finding as “the emergency tiller fits and can be deployed”.
• Autopilot drive attachment to the quadrant or ram.

• Anchor type and size appropriate to the vessel, rode type, length and condition.
• Bitter end secured to the vessel. Check it. This is a five-second check that is wrong surprisingly often.
• Windlass operation and, more importantly, its mounting and the structure under it.
• Strong points and the load path into structure — a cleat through-bolted to a deck skin with no backing is a finding.
• Chain locker drainage.

Carriage requirements are federal. This section is mostly counting and reading dates, and it is regularly the source of several orange findings.

• PFDs — number, sizes for those aboard, condition, and approval marking.
• Throwable device, visual distress signals in date, sound signalling device.
• Extinguishers — number and type for the vessel, gauges in the green, service dates.
• EPIRB / PLB registration current and battery in date. An unregistered EPIRB is a finding.
• Liferaft service and repack date. Out of date is a finding regardless of apparent condition.
• Navigation lights — operate them and check the arcs, not just that they illuminate.

1. Record conditions — sea state, wind, load aboard, and who operated the vessel.
2. Starting — cranking time, smoke on start, and what colour.
3. WOT rpm against the manufacturer's target range. This is the single most valuable number on the trial. Under-revving means over-propped, and it loads the entire drivetrain wrongly for the life of the boat. Over-revving is its own problem.
4. Temperature and oil pressure at sustained load, not just at idle.
5. Exhaust under load — colour and quantity. Persistent haze is a finding.
6. Vibration — record the rpm and the conditions at which it appears. The conditions are the diagnosis.
7. Transmission ahead and astern, engagement and any slip.
8. Steering under way, stopping and manoeuvring.
9. Electronics under way — several faults only appear with the engine running and the alternator loaded.
10. Bilge dry afterwards. Check it before you leave. A shaft seal or exhaust leak that only appears under way shows up here and nowhere else.

Part D · Other survey types  —  Unit 22

Damage surveys and incident investigation

A different discipline from condition surveying. IIMS sells two units on it, and it is where the insurance work is.

1. Cause. What mechanism produced this damage? Report the evidence for it, and say plainly where the evidence runs out. “Consistent with” is honest; “caused by” needs proof.
2. Extent. Which damage is attributable to this event, and which was already there? This is the hardest part and it is what the underwriter is paying for.
3. Quantum. What will it cost to put right? Scope of repair, not a quote — and never a quote from the yard you work for.

Underwriters work with yard-employed and staff surveyors routinely; what they need is to know the position before the report lands, not after. If the client would rather the surveyor and the repairer be different companies, that is their call to make with the facts in front of them.

• Photograph before you touch anything. Wide, then medium, then close, with a scale reference. You cannot go back.
• Do not clean, dry or disturb until it is documented. A dried bilge destroys the waterline evidence.
• Preserve failed components. A failed hose, a burnt connector, a fractured fitting. Bag it, label it, and record the chain of custody. It may end up in a lab or a courtroom.
• Record what others did before you arrived — salvors, the yard, the owner. Somebody has usually moved something.
• Note who was present and who instructed you.

Occasionally the evidence and the account do not match. Personal effects removed beforehand. Damage inconsistent with the described sequence. A pattern of prior claims. Equipment missing that should have been aboard.

Part E · The output  —  Unit 23

Condition rating and valuation

The part of a C&V most exposed to liability, and the part ESI has least training behind.

The grading system in general industry use runs: Excellent (Bristol) · Above Average · Average · Fair · Poor · Restorable. It is a market scale, not an engineering one — it describes how a vessel sits against comparable boats of its type and age.

The standard definition: the most probable price a vessel should bring in a competitive and open market, buyer and seller each acting prudently and knowledgeably, with the price unaffected by undue stimulus. It assumes both parties are typically motivated and well informed, that a reasonable exposure time was allowed, and that payment is cash or equivalent.

Estimated replacement cost is a different figure — the retail cost of a new vessel of the same make and model with similar equipment. Do not blend them.

Confidence is derived from the evidence you had, in the same spirit as the flag matrix. You do not pick a number that feels right — you find the row that describes what you actually obtained.

• List every comparable you considered, with date, location and whether the price is sold or asking.
• State the basis and the limitations of the valuation, in the report.
• Label opinion as opinion. The findings are measured; the value is judged.
• Never let the fee, the client's position, or the sale depend on the number. A fee contingent on value is prohibited and is disclaimed in the certification you sign.

Part E · The output  —  Unit 24

Issue, revision, and the practicum

How the document leaves the building, and how you get certified.

• The report goes to the client who commissioned it. Nobody else, unless the client says so in writing.
• Every issue carries a revision number and a date. The original is never overwritten.
• Finding IDs never change. A corrected item is marked corrected against its ID; it is not deleted and the list is not renumbered.
• Any unconfirmed standard designation is resolved before issue. The form flags these; the desk checks them.
• The desk keeps the record: report, field notes, photographs, instrument settings, signed scope.

The residential benchmark grades tests and gives 60 lab hours across the whole syllabus; the distance qualifications mark assignments and require no practical work at all. Neither measures whether a graduate can operate an instrument, and neither measures whether two graduates classify the same evidence the same way. Those are the two gaps ESI is built into.

Supervised surveys on real hulls, submitted through the platform in the real format and reviewed against the reference method. The industry benchmark requires three complete surveys with reports; ours is set by the desk and is not fewer.

Graduates hold society membership and an ESI certification. The first gets you accepted. The second is what gets noticed, because most working surveyors hold the same undifferentiated class and none of them can show an agreement figure.