The country's first joint ship design review center for the Yangtze River Delta region was unveiled in Shanghai.

On October 30, the nation's first "Yangtze River Delta Regional Ship Joint Drawing Review Center" was officially inaugurated in Shanghai, along with the release of the first set of ship drawings in the Yangtze River Delta that passed joint review. This marks the official implementation of "one-place review, regional mutual recognition" (i.e., "unified drawings") for ship drawings in the Yangtze River Delta. The integration of ship inspection in the Yangtze River Delta takes a critical step from "operation inspection" to the "full life cycle" collaboration at the forefront of design and construction, creating a new cross-regional collaborative model for building a unified national market.

Ship drawing reviews are at the forefront of ship construction, with the most complex technology and concentrated responsibility, directly affecting the intrinsic safety and construction efficiency of ships. In the past, due to administrative boundaries, the same set of design drawings needed to be reviewed separately by various ship inspection agencies in different provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Delta. For example, in mainstream shipbuilding cases in the industry: previously, if a ship design company designed a set of ship drawings and a shipowner in Zhejiang purchased them to build a ship in Zhejiang, Zhejiang's ship inspection agency would review them once; subsequently, if a shipowner in Jiangsu (or the same shipowner) wanted to use the same drawings to build a ship in Jiangsu, Jiangsu's ship inspection agency would have to review them again from the beginning. This repetitive review not only consumed substantial administrative resources but also forced shipbuilding enterprises and shipowners to deal with the pain points of repeated submissions, repeated modifications, and repeated waiting.

To address this bottleneck restricting regional industrial collaboration, under the guidance of the Maritime Safety Administration of the Ministry of Transport, the Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration spearheaded the creation of an innovative "1+5" regional collaborative organizational structure alongside ship inspection agencies from the three provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui, as well as the China Classification Society (CCS). By pooling national and local expert resources and implementing centralized expert joint reviews, fragmented reviews done by individual agencies in the past have been transformed into "one-place review, regional mutual recognition" on a unified regional platform.

It is estimated that after the implementation of the "unified drawings," the construction of a single new ship can save at least 3 months in the drawing review cycle on average, and directly reduce institutional transaction costs for ship enterprises by 600,000 to 700,000 yuan. Moreover, ships built using mutually recognized drawings will no longer require rechecking of drawings when transferring registration across provinces within the Yangtze River Delta, saving an additional 1 to 2 weeks of circulation time.

Currently, there is an annual demand for over 2,200 new ship drawing reviews and more than 7,500 cross-province ship transfers in the Yangtze River Delta region. With the regular operation of the Joint Drawing Review Center, more standardized ship type drawings will be included in the regional mutual recognition list. This not only provides shipowners with new options for more free and efficient cross-province shipbuilding and circulation but also greatly stimulates the overall vitality of the shipbuilding and shipping market in the Yangtze River Delta.

The inauguration of the Joint Drawing Review Center represents a vivid example of shifting the collaboration in Yangtze River Delta ship inspection from "point breakthroughs" to "comprehensive integration." In recent years, the Yangtze River Delta has taken the lead nationwide in achieving full coverage of "mutual recognition in operational ship inspections." Now, with the implementation of the "unified drawings" system, the Yangtze River Delta has truly established a collaborative closed-loop for the entire lifecycle of ships, spanning "drawing reviews, collaborative construction, and out-of-area operation."

Next, maritime and ship inspection agencies in the Yangtze River Delta will prioritize the practical operation of the Joint Drawing Review Center as an important lever for reform, continuously amplifying the combined effects of the reforms, and unifying technical discretion criteria. They aim to establish stronger safety measures at the source with higher standards, actively tackle technical standards for new industries such as new energy and smart ships, and aim to turn the Yangtze River Delta's ship inspection reform experiences into replicable, promotable national standards. This contributes the wisdom of the Yangtze River Delta to accelerating the construction of a strong transportation and maritime nation.