Ship Thickness Measurement and Hull Gauging in Le Havre

Inspection services for ships at Le Havre

Each service has its own page with the method, the class requirements and what the report contains.

Where thickness gauging is done around Le Havre

At the Port 2000 terminals, thickness gauging at Le Havre is fitted around cargo work. Ballast tanks, voids and the engine room can be entered once the ship's permit-to-work system allows it, but holds under working cranes are off limits, so hold readings are taken only where the chief officer and the stevedores agree a safe sequence. The inner basins are better for heavier scopes: a ship on a lay-by berth, with no cargo operations, can have a full tank programme or renewal-survey gauging worked through without interruption.

Tankers are a separate case. At the oil berths and at Antifer, cargo tanks are not entered during cargo operations and battery-powered instruments on deck in hazardous zones need the terminal's and the ship's permission. Ballast tanks on a laden arrival are usually empty, which makes the anchorage in the Baie de Seine a practical place to gauge them before berthing, weather permitting. For a laden tanker the anchorage reading is often the only chance before docking, because ballast goes in as soon as discharge starts. Rouen, up the Seine, is reached by road on the same mobilisation when a bulk carrier there needs readings.

• Port 2000 container terminals — targeted gauging of ballast tanks, hatch coamings and cross-deck structure on container ships within the berth window.
• Inner basins behind the locks — lay-by stays where a full tank programme or renewal-survey gauging can run without cargo operations.
• Old-port dry docks and repair quays — gauging on ferries, dredgers, port craft and other small and mid-sized ships during docking or repair afloat.
• Oil terminals and the Antifer crude terminal — ballast-tank and deck gauging on crude and product tankers within the terminal's safety rules.
• Baie de Seine anchorage — launch-served gauging on ships waiting for a berth or for orders, with laden tankers' empty ballast tanks a common target.
• Rouen grain terminals on the Seine — hold, hatch cover and ballast-tank gauging on bulk carriers loading grain, reached by road from Le Havre.

Regulation and market context at Le Havre

France applies port state control under the Paris MoU, and Le Havre's place on the main Asia–North Europe and transatlantic loops brings a steady flow of foreign-flag ships through that regime. Under the Paris MoU's risk-based targeting, older ships with a poor record are inspected more often, and visible wastage, holed air pipes or corroded hatch coamings are the kind of finding that turns an inspection into a detention. Readings taken before a call tell the master and the superintendent where the structure stands before an inspector asks.

Le Havre is inside the North Sea SOx ECA, which takes in the English Channel east of 5°W, so the 0.10% sulphur limit has applied on arrival and departure since 1 January 2015, and the EU ETS (since 2024) and FuelEU Maritime (since 2025) apply to every call. Scrubber-fitted container ships and car carriers run their systems throughout the Channel, and that duty shows up as wall loss in wash-water piping. For tankers at the oil terminals the framework is the ESP regime under SOLAS chapter XI-1 regulation 2 and IACS UR Z10.1 or Z10.4. Container ships are not ESP ships: their gauging follows the hull survey requirements of UR Z7 and their society's rules, with the extent growing at each renewal survey and hatch coamings, deck longitudinals and double-bottom tanks the usual focus.

Ships trading to Le Havre are inside a sulphur emission control area, where fuel must not exceed 0.10% sulphur unless an exhaust gas cleaning system (scrubber) is fitted. Scrubber wash-water piping, the overboard discharge and the hull penetration around it are among the fastest-corroding parts of a modern ship, so they belong in the gauging scope at every docking and, on open-loop systems, between dockings.

How a thickness measurement job runs at Le Havre

A gauging job at Le Havre runs the same way whatever the ship type. The sequence below is what the superintendent, the attending surveyor and the yard can expect from us.

Teams fly into Paris Charles de Gaulle and continue to Le Havre by road or rail; Paris-Orly is an alternative for some connections. The ship's agent requests ISPS gate passes for the named technicians at Port 2000 or the oil terminals, and books launch boats for ships at anchor in the Baie de Seine. France is part of the Schengen area, so every technician needs a Schengen visa: we start the applications once the call or docking window is firm and ask the owner or agent for an invitation letter naming the vessel and port. Flights are then planned against the agent's latest ETA.

• Send the vessel name or IMO number, ship type, class society, the survey due (annual, intermediate, renewal survey number, CAP or owner's condition survey), the port and dates, and the scope you expect.
• We confirm the scope against the class rules for that survey, prepare the thickness measurement plan with frame and section references, and say whether the measurement will be credited to a class survey.
• Mobilisation is planned around visa lead times and the vessel's schedule; the ship's agent arranges port access, and the yard or ship arranges staging, lighting, ventilation and gas-free certificates.
• Gauging with calibrated ultrasonic thickness gauges: through sound coatings only where the gauge's through-coating mode has been verified on a coated reference, otherwise on cleaned bare steel, with every reading tied to its frame, strake and location on the sketch.
• Readings are compared with original thicknesses as work proceeds; substantial and excessive corrosion and any cracks are reported to the attending surveyor and the superintendent the same day.
• The final report is issued on the class thickness-measurement formats with sketches, a summary of locations exceeding the allowable margins, piping tables where piping was in scope, and the gauge calibration and technician certificates.

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