Onboard Engineer Tools: 8 Apps for Ship Work

Updated 9 October 2026 · marine-engineering, ship-software, onboard-tech

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The digital tools every chief engineer should know are the ones that still work when the satellite link drops mid job: your planned maintenance system, an electronic record book you can defend to a port state inspector, a performance monitoring routine, a thermal camera, and a tablet holding every drawing you own. Everything else is optional. This article covers what each one actually does on a working ship, and where each one lets you down.

I am writing this from the engineer side of the bulkhead, so there is no vendor pitch here. Some of these tools genuinely save you a night of overtime. Some of them mainly save the office a phone call, and it is worth being honest about which is which before you spend your own money or your own hours learning them. If you already know the crew WiFi gets crowded during a maker call, the one line item worth paying for yourself is a personal eSIM such as Airalo, so a remote support session runs off a local tower in port instead of competing with the rest of the crew for the same pipe.

The digital tools every chief engineer should know, in one table

Here is the whole set at a glance, sorted by how much of your week it touches.

Where to start: get fluent in the PMS and the electronic record book first, because you answer for both. The first tool worth your own money is a thermal camera module, since it travels with you between ships and companies. For your own connectivity stack, I use Airalo for a personal eSIM that does not depend on the crew queue.

The table splits cleanly in two. The top three and the reporting software are company systems: you do not choose them, you inherit them, and your job is to run them well and keep the data honest. The thermal camera, the vibration screening, the document library and your own connectivity are personal kit. Those follow you from ship to ship, which is why they are the only items on the list where your own money makes sense.

Start with the PMS, because it owns your week

Your planned maintenance system is the single tool that decides whether your month is calm or chaotic. AMOS, TM Master, ShipManager and BASSnet all do the same core job: they hold the job list, the running hours, the spare part stock and the history, then replicate that database with the office over whatever link the ship has.

Most chief engineers can raise a job and sign it off. Far fewer can do the three things that actually matter.

• Reconcile stock against reality before you order. A spare that exists in the database and not in the store is how a main engine job stalls for six weeks. Physical count first, then correct the system, then order.
• Read the history before you open anything. The previous chief's remarks on the same unit are usually the fastest diagnostic tool on board, and they cost nothing to read.
• Understand what happens when replication fails. Every one of these systems keeps a local database and pushes changes when it can. If the ship and the office both edit the same record while the link is down, one version wins. Knowing which one, and how your superintendent sees it, saves an argument later.

The trap is data quality. A PMS shows a clean dashboard whether the underlying running hours are accurate or invented by a tired watchkeeper. If the running hours on a generator have been copy pasted for a year, every maintenance interval built on them is fiction. Fixing that is boring and it is the highest value hour you will spend on the system.

How the common PMS suites compare from the engine room

You rarely get to choose your PMS, so this comparison is about what to expect when you join a ship running one you have not used before. Interfaces and modules change with every release and every company configures them differently, so treat the right hand columns as things to check on your first day rather than fixed facts.

The pattern in the bottom row is the useful part. Every suite fails in the same place: where a human has to type a number. Learn where your system expects manual input, and check those numbers before you trust any overdue list built on them.

What a good PMS handover looks like

A handover note that says "PMS up to date" tells you nothing. Ask the outgoing chief for four specific things: the overdue list with a reason against each item, the critical spares that are below minimum stock, the last date the running hour counters were checked against the actual meters, and any job the office has asked about recently. Twenty minutes on those four items gives you a realistic picture of the system you are now answerable for.

Electronic record books, and how to survive an inspection with one

An electronic record book replaces the handwritten Oil Record Book and similar MARPOL logs with a guided digital form, and it must be a type approved system with the approval documentation available on board. The software will not let you post a physically impossible entry, which is the real benefit. Most Oil Record Book deficiencies come from arithmetic and sequence errors, and the software kills that whole category.

The legal footing is now settled. The MARPOL amendments that allow electronic record books entered into force on 1 October 2020, together with IMO guidelines on how such a system must work. In plain terms, the guidelines expect each entry to be traceable to the person who made it, corrections to leave the original entry visible, the record to be protected against tampering, and the ship to be able to produce the record for inspection, including a printed copy where the flag requires one. You can read the background on the IMO website, but the document that matters on board is the approval certificate for your specific system.

What it does not do is make you fluent. A port state control officer will ask you to produce a specific date range, show the approval certificate, and explain who holds signing rights. Practise that once in calm water rather than for the first time with an inspector standing behind you. Know how the system behaves if the master is ashore, how a correction is recorded, and where the backup export lives. Confirm the details with your company and your flag state, because the acceptable arrangement is set by them and by your class society, not by the software vendor.

The five inspection questions to rehearse

Run this mock inspection on yourself once per contract, preferably in the first week.

1. Produce every Oil Record Book Part I entry for a sludge or bilge operation in a named month, and show the matching sounding or tank figures.
2. Show the type approval certificate and explain which record books it covers.
3. Show how a wrong entry was corrected, with the original still visible.
4. Explain who can sign each entry and what happens when that person is off the ship.
5. Produce the most recent backup export and say where a second copy is kept.

If any of these takes you longer than a couple of minutes, fix the gap before the next port. The questions are predictable, and smooth answers change the tone of the whole inspection.

Keep the printed fallback procedure. Tablets fail, and an inspection does not pause while you find a charger.

Performance monitoring: the trend matters more than the number

Engine performance monitoring is worth learning because it turns a fuel argument into a data argument. Pressure measurement systems and torsion meters give you cylinder pressure traces and shaft power, and the onboard software plots them against a reference. When a superintendent asks why consumption climbed, a plotted trend ends the discussion in five minutes.

Two habits separate an engineer who trusts the system from one who is misled by it.

• Verify the sensors before you trust the curve. Drifted pressure transducers and a fouled torsion meter produce a confident graph of nonsense. Calibrate on a schedule and note when you did it.
• Log the conditions, not just the result. Draft, trim, sea state, hull condition and fuel grade all move the numbers. A performance report without those is not evidence of anything.

The same logic applies to fuel and emissions reporting software. It aggregates what you feed it. If the bunker figures and the flowmeter readings disagree and nobody investigates, the software will happily report the wrong one for a year.

Why the reporting side now carries real weight

Ten years ago a noon report error cost you an awkward email. Today the same figures feed several regulatory schemes at once. The IMO Data Collection System has required annual fuel consumption reporting from ships of 5,000 gross tonnage and above since 2019. The Carbon Intensity Indicator rating applies from 1 January 2023, and a ship that rates poorly for consecutive years needs a corrective plan. EU MRV reporting has applied to voyages touching EU ports since 2018, the EU Emissions Trading System has covered shipping since 2024, and FuelEU Maritime applied from 1 January 2025. Thresholds and phase in percentages under the EU schemes change by year, so check the current figures with your company or the European Commission pages rather than trusting a number in an old circular.

For the engine room, the consequence is simple. The fuel figure you sign off is no longer only an operational number. It feeds a rating and, on EU trade, an emissions bill. That is the strongest argument you will have for getting a flowmeter calibrated or a sounding table corrected.

A monthly routine that keeps the data honest

Pick one day a month. Compare the bunker delivery figure, the tank soundings and the flowmeter totals for the period, and write down the difference. Check that the shaft power reading at a known load still matches your reference. Note any sensor you replaced or recalibrated. It takes about an hour and it gives you a written record that the numbers were checked, which is exactly what an auditor or a charterer's claim team will ask for.

Thermal imaging, vibration and the tools that live in your pocket

A thermal camera is the best value diagnostic tool a chief engineer can carry, and the phone attachable modules are now good enough for shipboard work. You will use it for electrical panels, bearing housings, steam traps, exhaust temperature differences across units, and insulation damage that you cannot reach with a hand.

Two things go wrong with thermal work. Shiny metal reflects and reads far colder than it is, so measure on a painted or taped surface where you can. And emissivity is a setting, so a camera left on the default will give you numbers that look precise and are not. Take a baseline image of every important panel while everything is healthy, because thermal imaging is a comparison tool before it is an absolute one.

Vibration is the same story at a lower price. Phone based vibration apps are a screening tool that tells you something changed, and a proper handheld meter with a magnetic probe tells you roughly what. Neither replaces a spectrum analysis by someone who does it daily. Used honestly, they still catch a failing pump bearing weeks before it seizes on a Sunday.

Phone module, handheld camera or the contractor: which one for which job

Treat the price column as a rough guide only. Consumer thermal prices have been falling for several years and I have not checked every current model, so look at today's prices before you budget. The resolution point holds regardless: a low resolution module is fine if you stand close and compare like with like, and it struggles when you try to read a small terminal from across the switchboard room.

For vibration, the same three tiers apply. A phone app gives you an overall level and a trend. A handheld meter with a magnetic probe gives you a repeatable velocity reading you can compare against the severity zones in ISO 20816, the standard that has been replacing the older ISO 10816 series, and against the maker's limits. A full spectrum analysis tells you whether the problem is imbalance, misalignment, looseness or a bearing defect. Mark your measurement points with paint so every reading is taken in the same place, because a probe moved a few centimetres gives you a different number and a false trend.

Building a thermal round that actually gets done

The reason most thermal cameras end up in a drawer is that nobody turns them into a routine. Make a short list: main switchboard sections, emergency switchboard, the main engine exhaust branches, generator bearings, the biggest pump motors, and the steam traps you trust least. Photograph each one at the same load, from the same spot, once a month. Store the images in folders named by equipment and date. After three months you have a comparison set that makes a hot connection obvious at a glance.

A decent phone or tablet is doing double duty here. I covered which models survive engine room heat, oil and salt air in the guide to tablets that hold up in shipboard use, and the short version is that the ruggedness matters more than the processor.

Your document library, offline and searchable

Every drawing, manual and maker instruction you might need at 0300 should already be on a tablet, downloaded, and searchable by text. That is the whole tool. It is unglamorous and it changes how you work.

Build it once, then maintain it. Scan the drawings that only exist as paper. Keep a folder per system rather than per maker, because at 0300 you are thinking about the fuel system, not about who supplied the pump. Use a PDF app that lets you annotate and save, so the note about the odd shim thickness stays with the drawing instead of in your head.

Scanned drawings need one extra step. A scan is a picture, so the search box cannot find words in it until the file has been through text recognition. Most decent PDF and scanning apps can do this on the device. Run it before you sail, then test it by searching for a part number you know is on a scanned page.

A simple folder structure works better than a clever one. Mine runs: main engine, auxiliary engines, boilers and steam, fuel system, lube oil, cooling water, compressed air, purifiers, electrical, steering gear, deck machinery, pollution prevention, safety systems, and a final folder for class and statutory documents. Each folder holds the maker manuals, the relevant drawings, your own notes and the thermal images for that system. When something goes wrong you open one folder and everything is there.

Back it up somewhere that is not the tablet. A cloud folder that syncs when you have signal, plus one encrypted memory stick in your cabin, covers the two realistic failure modes: the device dies, or the device walks off. Several of the apps I use for this are in the roundup of apps that earn space on a marine engineer's phone.

One caution on copyright and company documents: some maker manuals and company procedures are controlled documents. Keeping a working copy for your own reference on board is normal practice, and taking a full set home to share is a different matter. Check your company's document control rules if you are unsure.

Remote support, and the bandwidth question behind it

Remote support is now a normal part of the job. Maker specialists join by video, class societies run remote surveys, and troubleshooting that used to need a flight now happens on a call. Knowing how to run that call well is a genuine skill.

The practical part is preparation. Get the machine open, the readings taken and the photographs ready before you dial, because expert time is expensive and the link may not hold. Have the running hours and the last overhaul record in front of you. Decide in advance who is holding the camera, because a person describing a problem while operating a phone one handed does neither well.

A short checklist I keep for these calls:

1. Readings and photographs gathered and named before the call starts.
2. The relevant drawing open on a second device.
3. A headset, because engine room noise defeats any phone speaker.
4. A plan for what happens if the video drops: switch to photographs and voice, then email the rest.
5. One person writing down every instruction the specialist gives, with the time.

The limiting factor is your connection. Satellite service onboard has improved a lot for crew, and I wrote up what daily life on it is really like in the honest review of Starlink Maritime for crew. Even so, ship bandwidth is shared and often shaped by policy, so confirm what a video call is allowed to use before you promise a maker two hours of screen sharing. If you want the full picture of what the different systems deliver in practice, the guide to how seafarers stay connected at sea covers it end to end. When the ship's own link is the one everybody else is also on, a personal eSIM is the fallback that does not depend on anyone's policy: Airalo is the one I keep installed for exactly that, so a remote support call can run off a local tower in port instead of fighting the rest of the crew for the same pipe.

eSIM data prices vary a lot by country and by plan size, and they change often, so I am not quoting a per gigabyte figure here that would be stale within months. Check the price for the specific port country in the app before you rely on it for a long video session.

Your personal device on crew and port WiFi

The other half of your connectivity stack is security on networks you do not control. Crew WiFi and port WiFi are shared networks, and when you log into email, banking or a company webmail from a personal laptop, a VPN encrypts that traffic so others on the same network cannot read it. I use Surfshark for this because one plan covers an unlimited number of devices, so the phone, the laptop and the tablet holding the document library all sit under the same subscription.

Keep this to your own devices. Company laptops usually run the company's own secure connection, and adding a personal VPN on top can break it or breach the IT policy. If in doubt, ask the IT department before installing anything on company hardware.

The honest cons nobody puts in the brochure

This is where most articles on ship digitalisation stop being useful, so here are the real ones.

Visibility runs both ways. When the office sees your PMS in near real time, overdue jobs become a conversation the same week instead of at the next audit. That is fair, and it also removes the breathing room chief engineers used to have for genuine operational reasons. Plan for the questions.

More systems mean more admin. Every digital tool adds a login, an update, a licence renewal and a training requirement. The hour you save on the job card can come straight back as software housekeeping, and on a short handover the new chief inherits all of it at once.

Hardware dies in the engine room. Heat, vibration, oil mist and salt air kill consumer devices. A tablet that lives in a machinery space has a short life, and a dead device during an inspection or a breakdown is worse than the paper it replaced. Keep a charged spare and keep the fallback procedure.

Data quality is invisible until it is expensive. A wrong number in a spreadsheet looks obviously wrong. The same wrong number inside a polished dashboard looks like a fact, and it can drive a maintenance decision or a fuel claim before anyone questions it.

Cyber requirements are now your problem too. Class societies and companies have tightened the rules on connecting equipment and memory sticks to ship systems. IMO has expected cyber risk to be addressed in the safety management system since 1 January 2021, and the IACS unified requirements E26 and E27 on cyber resilience apply to ships contracted for construction on or after 1 July 2024. Check what your class society and your company policy require before you plug a personal device into anything on the network, because the technically easy option is often the one that breaches procedure.

Passwords and logins become a handover item. Every system has accounts, and a chief who leaves without passing on access rights properly can lock the next chief out of a record book or a monitoring unit. Hand over access through the company process, never on a sticky note taped to the monitor.

Who should skip most of this

If you are sailing on a small vessel with a paper based system that works and an office that has no plans to change it, buying personal diagnostic gear is a hobby rather than a career move. Learn the thermal camera anyway, since it pays for itself in caught faults, and leave the rest.

If you are a second engineer aiming at your first chief's job, the priority order is different. Get fluent in the PMS and the record book first, because those are the two systems you will be personally answerable for. Condition monitoring can wait until you own the machinery.

And if your company runs one specific software suite, learn that suite deeply rather than sampling five. Depth in the system you actually use beats a shallow tour of the market every time. If you want structured learning around this, some of the options in the online courses for marine engineers worth taking cover condition monitoring properly.

How I would set this up over one sea passage

Take the first sea day for the PMS. Pull the overdue list, check five spare part locations against the database, and correct what is wrong. Take the second for the record book: run a mock inspection on yourself and find out which question you cannot answer smoothly.

Spend an afternoon building the thermal baseline. Photograph every main switchboard section, every important bearing housing and every steam trap under normal load, and file the images with the date. That folder becomes your comparison set for the whole contract.

On the same day, mark the vibration points on the pumps and fans you care about most, take a first reading at each one, and write the values into a simple table with the date and the load. Next month you compare against it.

Use one more sea day for the performance and fuel data. Compare the last month's bunker, sounding and flowmeter figures, note the difference, and check when the pressure transducers and the torsion meter were last calibrated. If nobody knows, that is your first job for the next port.

Finish with the document library. Download everything while you have signal, sort by system, and check the search works offline. The test is simple: switch the tablet to flight mode and try to find the lube oil system drawing in under thirty seconds.

More for crew: VPN for ship WiFi, fixes for slow crew WiFi, offline maps for shore leave, cheap calls home from port, apps for marine engineers.

FAQ

Which digital tools should every chief engineer know first?

Start with the planned maintenance system and the electronic record book, because you are personally accountable for both and an inspector can ask about either without warning. Once those are second nature, add a thermal camera and a document library on a tablet. Performance monitoring comes next, since it depends on trustworthy sensor data that takes time to establish.

Do I need to buy my own diagnostic tools as a chief engineer?

Not for the tools the company should supply, which are the PMS licence, the record book system and the fixed monitoring equipment. A personal thermal module and a decent rugged tablet are the two purchases that most engineers find worth their own money, because they travel with you between ships and companies. Ask the office first, since some companies will fund a thermal camera if you make the maintenance case for it.

Are electronic record books accepted by port state control?

Type approved electronic record books are accepted when the approval documentation is available on board and the system is used as the approval describes. The precise requirements come from your flag state, your company procedures and your class society, so confirm with them rather than with the software vendor. Keep the printed fallback procedure available in case the device fails during an inspection.

Can a phone app replace a proper vibration analyser?

A phone app is a screening tool that tells you something has changed on a machine you already know. It cannot give you the diagnostic detail of a real analyser with a proper accelerometer, and it should never be the basis for a bearing replacement decision on critical machinery. Used to spot trends between planned surveys, it still catches problems early, which is worth a lot on its own.

How do I keep ship drawings available when there is no internet?

Download everything to local storage before you sail, sort it by system rather than by maker, and verify the search works with the device in flight mode. Keep one backup in a cloud folder that syncs in port and one on an encrypted memory stick in your cabin. Check your company cyber policy before connecting any personal storage to ship equipment.

Which planned maintenance system is most common on merchant ships?

AMOS, TM Master, ShipManager and BASSnet are the names you will meet most often, and they all hold the job list, running hours, spares and history in a local database that replicates with the office. The one you need to learn is the one your company runs. Once you know one of them well, the next takes days rather than weeks, because the logic behind them is the same.

Is a phone thermal camera module good enough for engine room work?

For comparison work on switchboards, bearing housings, steam traps and exhaust branches, yes. A phone module has a lower resolution than a dedicated handheld, so stand closer and take a baseline image while the plant is healthy. For formal electrical surveys or anything that ends up in a class report, use the ship's or the contractor's calibrated camera.

Which records can be kept in an electronic record book?

MARPOL amendments that entered into force on 1 October 2020 allow electronic record books for the Oil Record Book Parts I and II, the Garbage Record Book and other MARPOL records, provided the system meets the IMO guidelines and the flag accepts it. Which books your ship actually keeps electronically is a company and flag decision, so check the approval certificate on board to see exactly what is covered.

What cyber rules apply to engineers plugging devices into ship systems?

Since 1 January 2021 IMO has expected cyber risk to be handled in the safety management system, and IACS unified requirements E26 and E27 apply to ships contracted for construction on or after 1 July 2024. In practice that means your company procedures decide which ports and networks a personal device may touch. Read them before connecting a memory stick or laptop to anything in the control room.

Should a chief engineer use a VPN on ship or port WiFi?

On your own phone or laptop over crew or port WiFi, a VPN encrypts the traffic on a network you do not control, which is sensible when you log into email or banking. On company equipment, follow company policy, because a personal VPN can break the company's own secure connection or breach procedure.

How long does it take to learn a new PMS after joining a ship?

Raising and closing jobs takes a day or two. Understanding how your company configured the job intervals, the spares structure and the replication schedule takes most of a first contract. Use the handover to ask the outgoing chief which records they distrust, because that list is worth more than any training video.

Verdict

Buy the thermal camera, learn your PMS properly, and build the offline document library this contract. Those three change how you work within a month, and none of them depend on a satellite link holding up. The rest of the digital tools every chief engineer should know can be added one at a time, in the order your ship actually needs them.

About the author

I work as a marine engineer and I run this site between contracts. Everything here comes from machinery spaces, port calls and inspections rather than from a vendor briefing, and where I have no first hand experience with a specific product I describe how the mechanism works instead of pretending to have tested it. If a tool is a waste of your money for the ship you are on, that is what you will read here.

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