RightShip Requirements Explained: Vessel Data, Safety Score, RISQ Inspection and the Age Trigger

What does RightShip actually require from my ship?

RightShip requires three separate things, not one: current vessel and company data on its platform, a valid RightShip inspection where the vessel’s type and age bring it into scope, and — separately — whatever a specific charterer has written into a charter party as a RightShip acceptance clause. None of these are statutory obligations. RightShip is a commercial vetting and risk-assessment platform used by charterers and cargo interests to decide whether they will accept a vessel; it is not a flag administration, not a class society, and its acceptance does not substitute for either.

That distinction matters because the three layers are managed by different people, on different timelines, and a gap in one does not show up in the others. A vessel can have flawless class and flag paperwork and still be rejected commercially because its platform data is stale, because it has crossed the inspection age trigger without a valid inspection, or because a charter party clause was never checked before fixing.

Three different things people call “RightShip requirements”

Confusing these three is the most expensive mistake operators make when preparing for “RightShip.” Each layer has its own owner and its own failure mode.

Layer	What it actually is	Who normally handles it
Platform / vessel data	Vessel and company particulars kept current on RightShip’s platform; the Safety Score is calculated from RightShip’s published inputs (see below)	Office / technical management, largely administrative
Inspection (RISQ)	The RightShip Inspection Ship Questionnaire — a physical inspection by an accredited inspector, applied to dry bulk and general cargo vessels that reach the inspection age trigger	Vessel, with office coordination beforehand
Charterer requirement	A clause in a specific charter party demanding the vessel be RightShip-accepted before laycan	Commercial / chartering desk, negotiated per fixture

A vessel can clear one layer and fail another in the same week. Preparing crew for an inspection that was never scheduled, while the office data behind the Safety Score sits unreviewed, is a common and avoidable pattern. For a comparison of how a different vetting regime separates its own layers, see our SIRE 2.0 transition guide.

The vessel data you are expected to keep current

The platform layer is administrative, not physical. RightShip’s assessment draws on data about the vessel and the company responsible for it — the DOC holder (technical manager), class society and flag are all inputs RightShip names in its Safety Score methodology — so a change of manager, class or flag is not just a certificate event; it changes what RightShip’s model sees. This is shore-side work: it is normally the technical manager’s office that keeps it current, not the crew on board.

There is no single published cadence for how often this data must be refreshed; the operating principle is that it should be updated whenever the underlying facts change rather than on a fixed calendar. Data that is technically true but months out of date is one of the most common, and most preventable, reasons a vessel’s standing looks worse than the ship itself. Use our RightShip readiness check to see where your own platform data may be lagging.

Safety Score: the inputs RightShip publishes — and what it does not

RightShip’s published Safety Score methodology describes the score as calculated from the vessel’s five-year historical performance, with risk factors considered at four levels: the vessel itself, its DOC holder, its class society and its flag. The model is built from six sub-scores and more than twenty safety considerations, and the scale runs from 0 to 5 plus “N/A”. The split matters: scores of N/A, 0, 1 and 2 are assigned by fixed rules; only when no rule is triggered does the statistical model produce a score, and that model output sits between 3 and 5.

Two points are worth stating plainly because they are often got wrong. First, vessel age is not an input to the Safety Score model — RightShip’s methodology says so explicitly. Age enters the picture through a different door: the inspection age trigger described below. RightShip’s guidance page states that a vessel without a valid RightShip inspection by the relevant phase date has its Safety Score downgraded to 2 out of 5 under the hybrid rule — a rule-based outcome the model never gets to override until the inspection is in place. Second, what RightShip publishes is the list of inputs and the scale, not a formula you can compute by hand — this guide does not attempt to reconstruct one, and any source that claims to give you exact weightings should be treated with caution.

The practical implication is that the Safety Score is closer to an aggregate performance signal than a single audit you can pass or fail. Weaknesses that feed it — a poor port state control record, for instance — sit upstream of the score itself, and they age out only slowly over the five-year window. Our guide on engine room inspection risks covers one of the areas that most often produces the kind of findings that feed negative history.

The inspection layer: RISQ and what an inspector expects to find on board

RISQ — the RightShip Inspection Ship Questionnaire, currently in its 3.2 revision — is RightShip’s inspection scheme for dry bulk and general cargo vessels, delivered through accredited inspectors who attend the ship physically. This guide does not list specific question numbers, item counts, or pass thresholds; RightShip’s own inspection documentation is the authority on that level of detail, and inventing numbers here would mislead a crew preparing for the real thing.

What matters operationally is the same principle that applies to any vetting-style inspection: physical condition and supporting records need to match. A well-maintained space with no corresponding maintenance record is still a finding. Before scheduling, run through our RISQ inspection checklist to structure the preparation rather than starting from a blank deck.

The age trigger: where it stands today and what changes in January 2027

The inspection age trigger is the vessel age at which RightShip expects a valid RightShip inspection to be in place for a dry bulk or general cargo vessel. RightShip is reducing it from 14 years to 10 in four phases, and — this is the part many planning notes miss — three of the four phases are already in force:

Phase	Trigger age	Implementation
1	13 years	1 July – 1 October 2025
2	12 years	from 1 April 2026
3	11 years	from 1 July 2026 — the position today
4	10 years (two RightShip publications) or 10.5 years (one)	1 January 2027 or 20 January 2027

The final step is where RightShip’s own publications disagree. Its consolidated RISQ 3.2 update and its revised-timeline release both give 10 years from 1 January 2027; its guidance page written for owners, managers and charterers gives 10.5 years from 20 January 2027. Two sources to one favours 10 years — but the outlier is the page written for the people who plan against it, so confirm the current position with RightShip before committing a dry-dock or fixture plan to either date.

The planning logic is therefore two questions, not one. First: is the vessel already at or past 11 years today without a valid RightShip inspection? If so, it is in scope now, not in 2027 — and under RightShip’s stated rule its Safety Score is already capped at 2 until an inspection is completed. Second: take the build date, add 10 years, and compare the result with January 2027 — if it falls before, the vessel crosses the final line on day one of the new phase; if after, there is a known window for sequencing dry-docks, crew changes and data updates. Run both checks for your fleet with our RightShip age trigger tool, which shows every phase date and both readings of the final step, rather than estimating by eye.

A 90-day readiness path

Because the three layers above move at different speeds, a readiness plan works best staged rather than tackled all at once.

Window	Focus	Owner
Day 0–30	Audit platform data (ownership, DOC holder, class, flag, particulars) against what is currently on file; correct anything stale. Confirm where each vessel sits against the current 11-year trigger and the January 2027 step.	Office
Day 31–60	Walk the vessel against RISQ-style expectations — physical condition matched to supporting records — before any inspection is scheduled, not after.	Vessel + technical superintendent
Day 61–90	Check current and upcoming charter parties for RightShip acceptance clauses; confirm the commercial desk knows the vessel’s actual standing before it is fixed, not after a charterer raises it.	Chartering / commercial

Our 90-day RightShip readiness plan turns this table into a working checklist. The same staged logic — fix records before the inspection, not during it — is one we’ve also seen work in reducing PSC detentions tied to engine room findings.

Where operators actually lose: the commercial cost of “not accepted”

RightShip rejection does not detain a ship the way a flag or port state action can — there is no statutory penalty. The cost shows up commercially instead: a charterer declining the vessel for a fixture, a cargo interest asking for a substitute, or a broker quietly steering business elsewhere on a vessel with a poor standing. None of this appears on a certificate. It appears in which fixtures a vessel is offered for in the first place.

This is why treating RightShip as “paperwork to get through” undersells it. It sits alongside the wider set of commercial and regulatory pressures shaping 2026 fixtures — see our overview of regulations affecting shipowners in 2026 for how it fits into that broader picture. A vessel that is physically sound but administratively invisible on RightShip’s platform is, commercially, indistinguishable from one with a real problem — and charterers rarely stop to ask which one they are looking at.