Vessel arrival and docking process map

What is in this map

17 steps across 5 swimlanes and 4 phases, with 3 decision points.

Swimlanes (who does the work)

Planning, Dock Master, Berth and crane ops, Vessel / customer and Project team

Phases (left to right)

Pre-arrival, Berth preparation, Pilotage and entry and Securing and handover

Why map this process

Docking looks like a single event — the vessel arrives, ties up — but the map shows it is really three separate authorities handing off in sequence: Planning verifies the vessel fits the assigned berth before anyone books a pilot, the Dock Master owns the physical approach and mooring, and the project team only takes custody at the arrival checklist. A yard that treats docking as one step loses the ability to say who was accountable when a fender gets crushed or a discrepancy goes unlogged.

The weather-and-tidal-window decision is a loop, not a gate, and that is the map's most useful feature: a vessel held at anchorage returns to the same decision rather than falling out of the process. Any adaptation that turns this into a straight line — wait for weather, then dock — throws away the fact that a hold can recur for hours or days, and that whoever is monitoring the window needs to be named, not implied.

Every step in the map

This is the spreadsheet behind the diagram. The numbers in “Goes to” are row numbers, which is exactly what the editor’s “Line to” column holds — so you can read the flow here and retype any part of it.

The decision points

Every branch in the map, with the label on each outgoing line. These are the questions the process has to be able to answer.

• 3. Vessel fits **assigned berth**?

  Owned by Dock Master · Pre-arrival

  • Yes → step 5
  • No → step 4

• 8. Weather and tidal window **acceptable**?

  Owned by Dock Master · Pilotage and entry

  • Go → step 10
  • Hold → step 9

• 14. Arrival discrepancy noted?

  Owned by Dock Master · Securing and handover

  • Yes → step 15
  • No → step 16

Notes on specific steps

These notes travel with the map. In the editor they live in the Notes column and appear when you open a box.

1. Vessel ETA and particulars received

ETA, draft, beam, length and any known defects arrive from the customer or agent. Everything downstream keys off this record, so a wrong figure here surfaces as a berth that does not fit.

15. Log **discrepancy** and notify project manager

Fender damage, a wrong draft reading, an undeclared hazardous cargo — logged here so the project team opens the job already knowing about it instead of discovering it during the first inspection.

Making it yours

Start with the Vertical lane column: this chart's five lanes (Planning, Dock Master, Berth and crane ops, Vessel/customer, Project team) split responsibility by who can act, not by department name, so if your yard runs Planning and the Dock Master as one role, merge the lanes rather than leaving one empty. Row 14, the arrival-discrepancy decision, is the row worth protecting: its Yes branch is the only place a fender strike or an undeclared hazard gets a record before handover, and shortening it to a single 'note issues' box loses the branch that forces someone to act on it before signing custody over.

What to watch out for

• Do not collapse the berth-fit check into the ETA step. Verifying draft, beam and length against the berth plan is a distinct technical review with its own failure mode — an alternate-berth or dry-dock reassignment — and folding it into 'vessel arrives' hides the reassignment path entirely.
• The discrepancy branch is easy to delete because it is rarely taken. It is also the only row that produces a written record before custody transfers, which is exactly the record a yard needs when a damage claim surfaces two weeks later.
• Handover is a meeting, not a signature. If you compress it into the arrival checklist step, the project team can end up owning a vessel nobody formally briefed them on — the checklist covers the vessel's condition, not what the project team needs to do next.

Frequently asked questions