Put two sister vessels, built in the same yard to the same specification, into two different fleets, and within a couple of years their reliability, running costs, and breakdown history will diverge sharply — not because of the steel, but because of how each fleet was managed. Fleet Management is the discipline that decides which direction that divergence goes: whether maintenance data gets used before a failure or only explained after one. The Fleet Maintenance Planning and Performance Benchmarking Training Course, delivered by Arab British Fellowship Training Academy, is built for the professionals who manage vessels at fleet scale, where small inefficiencies compound fast.

Across seven practical modules, participants move from fleet-level thinking through maintenance planning, operational efficiency, and performance benchmarking, before turning to how fleet data actually drives investment and cross-department decisions. The course treats cost, safety, and availability as one balancing act rather than three separate targets, and closes on how to make fleet performance gains last beyond a single review cycle. Participants leave with a systems-level understanding of marine fleet management they can apply directly to maintenance planning, benchmarking, and fleet-wide decisions in their own organisation.

By the end of this training course, participants will be able to:

• Apply fleet-level thinking to catch problems that single-vessel management misses
• Build maintenance planning schedules that prevent breakdowns rather than react to them
• Improve operational efficiency across different vessel types and trading patterns
• Benchmark fleet performance fairly and identify underperforming vessels early
• Use performance and maintenance data to guide fleet investment and deployment decisions
• Balance maintenance cost against operational availability and safety requirements
• Coordinate fleet-wide decisions across technical, operational, and commercial teams
• Sustain fleet performance improvement beyond a single review cycle

Target Audience

• Fleet managers and marine superintendents overseeing multiple vessels
• Technical managers responsible for vessel maintenance and reliability
• Operations managers coordinating fleet-wide performance
• Ship owners and operators managing fleet investment decisions
• Maintenance planning and reliability engineers within shipping companies
• Professionals transitioning into marine fleet management roles

Module 1: Why Fleet-Level Thinking Beats Vessel-by-Vessel Management

• Why fleet-level thinking prevents problems single-vessel management misses
• Managing consistency and standards across vessels of different age and type
• Identifying fleet-wide risks that individual vessel management can overlook

Module 2: Building Maintenance Plans That Prevent Breakdowns

• Structuring maintenance schedules that prevent breakdowns before they occur
• Balancing planned maintenance against operational availability requirements

Module 3: Raising Operational Efficiency Across the Fleet

• Identifying efficiency gains across fuel consumption, routing, and scheduling
• Applying operational improvements consistently across different vessel types

Module 4: Benchmarking and Measuring Fleet Performance

• Comparing vessel performance fairly across trades, age, and vessel type
• Identifying underperforming vessels before they affect fleet-wide results

Module 5: Using Fleet Data to Guide Investment and Deployment

• Applying maintenance and performance data to guide investment and deployment
• Avoiding decisions based on incomplete or misleading fleet data

Module 6: Balancing Cost, Safety, and Availability Across Departments

• Managing the trade-off between maintenance spend and operational availability
• Avoiding cost-cutting decisions that create safety or reliability risk
• Aligning fleet decisions across technical, operational, and commercial teams

Module 7: Sustaining Fleet Performance Improvement Long-Term

• Applying lessons learned across the fleet to future vessel investment decisions
• Sustaining fleet performance improvement beyond a single review cycle