Page 40: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2026)

CLASSIFICATION young man, met another in? uential ABS leader, Bob Somerville. plank in the digitalization conversation is connectivity via both

Another painting, behind his desk, is a scene of New York legacy and new tech entrants such as Starlink. “We can take

Harbor that includes Fort William on Governor’s Island, data right off of the vessels and start doing predictive analytics which served as his kindergarten. For McDonald, these things today. We’ve been building our predictive analysis capability are both decorative and anchors to a life spent inside the orbit for several years, which started with U.S. government ? eets. of maritime service, safety and tradition. This personal his- We have condition-based monitoring today on almost 20 ves- tory is important it gives depth, breadth and context to not only sels with Military Sealift Command, which was the world’s

McDonald’s past, but helps to explain the tone he brings to ? rst CBM class program and growing every year as an indica-

ABS now. He is not trying to reinvent the mission of class. tion of their satisfaction with it. We’re starting to bring that

He is aiming to make sure the mission remains relevant as the more into the commercial business, too, offshore already and operating environment changes around it. starting now with commercial shipping pilots.”

With all of the tech talk and the promise that it offers, the

ABS Today starting point still is people. For all the justi? ed industry fas-

When taking the 50,000-foot view of ABS today, McDon- cination with AI, autonomy, robotics and digital twins, Mc- ald points ? rst to the scale of the organization and the con- Donald comes back repeatedly to the human side of the busi- ? dence that owners and builders continue to place in it. He ness, as the common thread is still judgment. The industry still points to a classed ? eet measured in the hundreds of millions needs people who understand ships, machinery, operations, of gross tons, thousands of vessels and a sizable orderbook. risk and the consequences of getting something wrong.

But he does not linger on size for the sake of size, rather “We’re an organization of engineers, technologists, digital he is more interested in what this growth signals: trust. In his engineers and coders and not just in your standard maritime view, clients still want a class partner that is technically cred- practices; but now we have everything from AI Experts, Cyber ible, responsive, globally present and capable of supporting experts, and moving into robotics, autonomy and nuclear,” said them well beyond the narrowest de? nition of a survey cycle. McDonald. “We have a global footprint but we’re U.S.-based,

That broader support theme comes up again and again. With which allows us to work with various government industries as emerging technology grabbing the headlines, McDonald is well as a number of high-tech companies. There is a lot of focus careful to ground ABS in its core purpose. around innovation … not just our core business, the rules and “Our core business is classi? cation, that’s who we are, a tools that we have today but what we’re looking at tomorrow.

mission-driven organization and that’s what we’ve been doing “ABS has the best people in the industry. It’s a family and I since 1862. How we do it is another matter. If you look at the am proud of that.” investments being made in technology today, maritime is most

Safety First … and Always certainly on this growth curve that we’ve never seen before,” said McDonald. “When you bring in sensor technology, and McDonald’s emphasis on people also runs straight through the newbuilds you’re seeing around the world today, from au- ABS’ safety culture, both internally with its own people and tonomous systems to the sensor technology to optimizing every through the ships under ABS classi? cation. McDonald takes ob- aspect of machinery systems and monitoring the hull’s perfor- vious pride in the organization’s record, both in terms of outside mance; and then you overlay a digital twin framework where validation and internal performance. Port state control remains an you can monitor real-time your vessels historical and real-time important external check on class society performance, and ABS performance; what the future looks like for us is taking all that has maintained a strong standing there for years. He sees that not of that information, using the tools we’re building out and simply as a measure of ABS rules and processes, but as evidence bringing that to bear on the core work we do in classi? cation.” of alignment between ABS and the owners and operators it serves.

McDonald is adept, too, at bringing big picture matters like Internally, he talks about safety as something built into the digitalization down to reality level. organization’s DNA, its daily conduct, not simply a slogan “Condition-based classi? cation, condition-based mainte- dusted off for presentations. He takes pride in the long stretches nance these are two areas that are very interesting to me in without lost-time injuries and to the importance of pushing ac- that, if I look back ? ve years ago, ABS really started to look at countability from the executive level down through every layer the data we had on our vessels: how can we structure that data of management to the personnel actually boarding ships and en- properly? How do we build these large-language models? How tering hazardous spaces. That is not glamorous material, which do we start using that information to drive value to our clients is exactly why it matters. In class, safety loses meaning the mo- that either help them with operational ef? ciency or helps us ment it becomes abstract.

drive a stronger safety framework onboard the vessels and at He's passionate too in discussing the connection of that safety the same time gives us the ability to strengthen our rules and mindset to technology. He does not talk about digitalization as the regulations that we have because we’re seeing how these a replacement for class. He talks about it as a way to make class vessels operate with much more detail,” said McDonald. A key more informed, more targeted and, in some cases, more ef? cient.

40 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • April 2026

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