SIRE 2.0 Explained: What Every Tanker Crew Needs to Know

In September 2024, OCIMF retired the inspection questionnaire that had governed tanker vetting for over a decade and replaced it with something built entirely differently. SIRE 2.0 doesn't just digitise the old process — it changes what inspectors look for, how they score it, and who on board is expected to answer for it.

For a tanker crew, that shift matters more than any regulatory update in recent memory. This article walks through what SIRE 2.0 actually is, how an inspection under the new regime works, and what your crew should be doing differently to prepare for one.

What SIRE 2.0 Replaced, and Why

The Ship Inspection Report Programme, known simply as SIRE, has existed since 1993. Oil majors, charterers, and terminal operators have used it as a shared basis for judging whether a tanker was fit for their operations. For most of its life, that meant a long, fixed questionnaire — commonly referred to by its final version, VIQ7 — with binary yes-or-no answers that crews could, in practice, prepare for by memorising likely questions.

OCIMF permanently retired VIQ7 on 2 September 2024 and made SIRE 2.0 the tanker industry's sole commercial inspection regime, and it was built to close exactly that loophole. Rather than a fixed list, each inspection now generates its own bespoke questionnaire — the Compiled Vessel Inspection Questionnaire, or CVIQ — pulled from a much larger question library specific to that vessel and voyage. No two CVIQs look the same, and every crew member aboard is expected to demonstrate real operational competence rather than a rehearsed answer.

The redesign reflects a fairly blunt conclusion OCIMF reached: most maritime incidents don't come from equipment that has failed outright — they come from how people interact with that equipment. SIRE 2.0 was built around that finding, which is why human performance now carries as much weight in an inspection as the condition of the hardware.

The Three Dimensions of a SIRE 2.0 Inspection

Every question in the CVIQ is drawn from one of three assessment dimensions:

• Hardware — the physical condition, maintenance, and readiness of equipment on board.
• Procedures — whether documented processes are actually followed in practice, not just written down.
• Human Factors — how crew members reason through a task, communicate, and respond under questioning.

This last dimension is the real departure from VIQ7. Inspectors are trained to observe how a crew member arrives at an answer, not just whether the answer is technically correct. Assessment of the human element draws on nine defined Performance Influencing Factors, which examine things like fatigue, communication, and situational awareness rather than pure technical knowledge.

How the CVIQ Question Library Actually Works

Rather than asking every vessel the same fixed set of questions, SIRE 2.0 draws from several categories of questions each time a CVIQ is generated:

• Core questions — safety-critical items that appear in every inspection, forming roughly half of the total question set.
• Rotational questions — cycled in over successive inspections so that, across the fleet's inspection history, full coverage of the question library is eventually achieved.
• Campaign questions — time-limited focus areas that OCIMF elevates when a particular incident type is trending upward across the industry.
• Conditional questions — triggered by vessel-specific factors, such as vessel type or declarations made in the pre-inspection questionnaire.

With roughly 100 tailored questions drawn from a large question library per inspection, no two SIRE 2.0 inspections look alike, which is precisely the point — a crew cannot prepare by memorising last year's inspection report.

How Responses Are Graded

VIQ7's binary yes/no format has been replaced with a graded, four-tier scale. An inspector no longer records a single pass or fail — they record how well a hardware item, procedure, or crew response actually measured up, which produces a far more detailed and defensible record than the old system allowed.

That detail comes at a cost for operators who are used to a quick pass. Because a single underlying defect can now generate as many as six separate observations spread across different chapters of the report, a problem that would once have shown up as one line item can multiply across the CVIQ. Preparation now has to address root causes, not individual checklist items.

What This Means for Crew Preparation

The practical implication for any tanker crew is straightforward but demanding: everyone on board, not just the officer likely to be questioned, needs to be able to explain the reasoning behind a procedure, not just perform it. Some practical steps that IMT recommends to operators preparing for a SIRE 2.0 inspection:

• Run internal drills that include follow-up "why" questions, not just task completion.
• Maintain a rolling photo and maintenance record for hardware items, since inspectors increasingly rely on documented history rather than a single-day snapshot.
• Rotate who leads familiarisation sessions so competency isn't concentrated in one or two senior crew members.
• Review recent OCIMF campaign question areas before an inspection window opens, since these carry elevated scrutiny while active.

Crews that treat SIRE 2.0 readiness as a continuous habit — rather than a task to complete the week before an inspection — consistently score better across the Hardware, Procedures, and Human Factors dimensions alike.

Common Mistakes Operators Are Still Making

Even two years into the new regime, the same avoidable mistakes keep showing up in inspection reports:

• Treating SIRE 2.0 preparation as a paperwork exercise instead of a crew competency exercise.
• Briefing only the officers most likely to be interviewed, leaving junior ratings unprepared for direct questioning.
• Waiting until an inspection is scheduled to gather photo evidence, rather than maintaining it continuously.
• Assuming a previous strong CVIQ result means the next one will look similar — it won't, by design.

Frequently Asked Questions