Most IHM guidance is written from the regulator’s side of the table. This one is written from yours. When a Port State Control (PSC) officer or a class surveyor sits down to look at your Inventory of Hazardous Materials, what do they actually ask for — and what trips yachts up most often?
The reassuring part: an IHM inspection is rarely about catching you out on chemistry. It is about documentation discipline. Almost every finding comes down to a record that should exist and does not, or a date that has quietly slipped past.
The documents an inspector typically requests
In a Convention or EU port, an officer reviewing your IHM will usually want to see:
- The certificate and its validity dates — under the Hong Kong Convention, the International Certificate on the Inventory of Hazardous Materials (ICIHM); under the EU Ship Recycling Regulation, the Inventory Certificate or Statement of Compliance. (We explain the difference between the two here.)
- The inventory itself — and in particular, that Part I is populated, not blank. An empty or token Part I is one of the clearest signals that an IHM was drafted once and never maintained.
- Change records since the last survey — evidence that the inventory has been updated when materials changed.
- MD/SDoC documentation — Material Declarations and Supplier’s Declarations of Conformity behind any material change, typically from a refit or equipment replacement.
- Part III safety data sheets — current SDS for the hazardous stores actually held on board.
The findings that come up most often
Across yachts, the same handful of issues account for most IHM-related findings:
- Certificate expired. A renewal survey was missed, and the certificate lapsed. This is purely a calendar problem — and entirely avoidable with a tracked renewal date.
- A known refit with no change records. The vessel visibly had work done — new insulation, replaced refrigeration, a re-fit-out — but the inventory was never updated to match. To an inspector, this is the most telling gap, because the work is obvious and the paperwork is not.
- Missing contractor documentation. A material changed, but the Material Declaration or SDoC from the contractor who did the work was never collected. Getting it months later, after the yard has moved on, is hard.
- Out-of-date Part III SDS. A product in the stores locker was reformulated or superseded, and the safety data sheet on file no longer matches what is on board.
Notice what these have in common: none of them are about the original survey being wrong. They are about the inventory not being kept alive between surveys. The IHM is a living document, and inspection is where that shows.
How to be ready — a pre-arrival check
You do not need a survey to be inspection-ready. You need to be able to answer four questions before your vessel reaches a Convention or EU port:
- Is the certificate current, and is the next renewal date in the calendar?
- Has any work in the past five years changed a controlled material without a matching inventory entry? A refit, a refrigerant system change, a replaced battery bank.
- Do you hold the MD/SDoC documentation for that work?
- Are the Part III SDS for current stores up to date?
If you can answer all four with confidence, an IHM inspection is a short, calm conversation. If any answer is “I’m not sure,” that is the thing to close before the port, not after the officer is aboard.
The detailed version of this — the full pre-survey walk-through — is in our renewal survey preparation checklist.
Where software changes the picture
The four questions above are exactly the state a purpose-built IHM workspace keeps visible at all times: certificate dates tracked and counting down, change records logged against the events that triggered them, MD/SDoC stored against each change, and SDS held with the Part III entries they support. Instead of reconstructing the answer before each port call, you read it off a dashboard.
For the full picture of what an IHM requires and how to keep it current, see our complete guide to IHM for superyachts.
This article is general guidance, not a statement of the enforcement procedures in any particular jurisdiction. For the consequences and procedures that apply to your vessel, refer to your flag State administration or the relevant regional Memorandum of Understanding (Paris MOU, Tokyo MOU, and others).
MANTIS is IHM compliance management software for superyachts. It tracks certificate expiry and survey intervals, logs change records, stores MD/SDoC documentation, and generates survey-pack PDFs for class society review. Start free beta →