New from MTS, October 2026. The MTS DP Committee has published a new DP System FMEA Gap Analysis Tool (final revision 9 October 2026): 388 weighted review criteria in nine workstreams, with a practitioner manual and guidance for AI-assisted assessment. The manual describes TECHOP D-05 as an important methodology and content source that the new criteria carry forward. GapAnalyzer assesses against D-05 today; support for the new tool is in development. Under that guidance, AI-assisted results are a draft until a competent DP consultant has reviewed each entry; GapAnalyzer produces the draft that review starts from.
What TECHOP D-05 is
The MTS DP Committee published TECHOP D-05 (Rev1, January 2021) because of what it calls a wide variation in the quality and scope of FMEAs being approved as demonstrating fault tolerance. DP Class 2 and 3 vessels must be single fault tolerant, and the FMEA, validated by proving trials, is how that is shown to Class. An FMEA that misses a single point failure or a common cause failure leaves the vessel exposed to loss of position when that failure occurs during operations.
D-05 gives FMEA stakeholders a structured way to test whether an FMEA was competently executed: a formal gap analysis between the submitted document and the industry guidance on FMEAs. The checklist in its Appendix A was prepared from five sources:
- MTS DP Vessel Design Philosophy Guidelines
- DNV Recommended Practice for FMEA of Redundant Systems (RP-D102)
- IMCA M166, Guidance on Failure Modes and Effects Analysis
- IMCA M206, A Guide to DP Electrical Power and Control Systems
- IMCA M04/04, Methods of Establishing the Safety and Reliability of DP Systems
The gap analysis checks the scope and methodology of the FMEA against that guidance. It does not repeat or correct the analysis, and it is normally carried out using only the FMEA report itself as source material (D-05 §4.3.1).
ODP 04 or D-05? They are the same document. Under the earlier MTS numbering it was TECHOP ODP 04 (D) FMEA Gap Analysis, and the flowchart inside D-05 still refers to it by that name. If a charterer or Class asks for an ODP 04 gap analysis, this is the one.
What the checklist covers
The D-05 table runs to 737 items across ten system groups. Methodology checks are deliberately repeated in every subsystem: D-05 accepts the repetition because restricting them to a single entry risks overlooking essential parts of the analysis (§4.3.2).
Not every item applies to every vessel. D-05 marks each item against four arrangements: closed bus-ties, open bus-ties, DP Class 3, and fail safe (systems whose failure can cause a drive-off, such as thruster controls, DP control, references and sensors). GapAnalyzer takes the vessel's DP class and bus-tie configuration at upload and assesses each item accordingly.
How findings are graded
D-05 uses a four-colour scheme (§4.3.3). GapAnalyzer's verdicts map onto it one to one, so the output reads the way a D-05 reviewer expects:
| D-05 colour | Meaning in D-05 | GapAnalyzer verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Analysis satisfactory | YES |
| Yellow | Analysis incomplete | PARTIAL |
| Red | Analysis omitted or contains significant errors | NO |
| Grey | Not applicable to this vessel's design | N/A |
With grey items discounted, the share of yellow and red findings gives the level of deficiency as a percentage (§4.3.8). GapAnalyzer reports that deficiency figure as MTS defines it, with the green, yellow and red shares behind it. It adds no score or grade of its own: every number in the report traces back to a paragraph of D-05.
Fail-safe items first
D-05 marks 63 items in a separate FAIL SAFE column: systems that can fail in a way that causes a drive-off, typically thruster controls, the DP control system, and references and sensors (§4.3.10). GapAnalyzer reports how many of them are not satisfactory and lists those findings at the top of the report, ahead of the full table.
The next step, as D-05 sets it out
D-05's flowchart sends every yellow or red finding to the same next step: confirm it against the vessel's design documentation (§4.4.1). The report states how many findings that is. It is not a pass or a fail: if that review does not confirm the findings, the flowchart ends with the FMEA reported as satisfactory.
Why a D-05 gap analysis is expensive
The checklist is public, but using it well is not simple. Each of the 737 items needs a judgement from someone who knows DP redundancy concepts: is this equipment absent from the FMEA because it is not fitted, or because the analysis was omitted? D-05's rule is that an omission which could conceal significant failure effects is red, and one with no significant impact is grey (§4.3.6). Making that call hundreds of times, with the FMEA open in one window and the spreadsheet in the other, is specialist work.
In practice a D-05 review of a full DP system FMEA takes an experienced DP engineer one to two weeks. International DP consultancies typically charge €140 to €190 an hour for this kind of work, so two weeks of it comes to roughly €10,500 to €15,000 for one FMEA, before anyone has discussed the findings, plus the wait for a specialist to become available.
| Manual D-05 review | GapAnalyzer | |
|---|---|---|
| Time | 1–2 weeks of specialist time, plus lead time to book one | About an hour from upload |
| Coverage | Depends on the reviewer's stamina across 737 rows | Every item evaluated, every time |
| Traceability | Comments in a spreadsheet | Each verdict cites the FMEA section it relied on; click through to the source page |
| Consistency | Two reviewers produce two different gap lists | The same criteria applied to every item on every run |
| Deliverable | Filled MTS D-05 workbook and a summary | Filled MTS D-05 workbook, PDF report, D-05 deficiency figure and fail-safe tally |
On consistency: in our MarCompBench study, two DP experts and a maritime consultancy assessed the same DP operations manual against the same MTS checklist and agreed on roughly half the items. Reviewer variation is a property of the task, not of any one reviewer.
What you get
The MTS companion spreadsheet with the verdict, the supporting evidence from the FMEA and a comment on every row: the same artefact an assurance firm would hand you.
Each finding points to the section of the FMEA it relied on. Open it and the source page sits beside the assessment, so findings can be checked rather than trusted.
Where the FMEA says nothing about an item, the verdict is No with an explanation of what is missing. The analysis is instructed to cite only your FMEA, and every citation links to the passage it came from, so you can check it.
FMEAs carry much of their engineering intent in one-line diagrams and system drawings. The extraction pipeline passes them to the analysis as visual context instead of dropping them.
Step one of six, done properly
D-05 describes six steps for acting on a gap analysis (§4.4). The first is to carry out the gap analysis. The second is to confirm the yellow and red findings against the vessel's design documentation, and the rest deal with additional analysis and mitigation. Steps two to six need an engineer's judgement and access to the design. Step one mostly needs time.
GapAnalyzer does step one. Your DP engineer, or the assurance firm you already use, starts from a complete, cited D-05 table and spends their hours confirming findings and deciding what to do about them, rather than working through 737 rows.
When to run it
D-05 is specific on timing: the most useful point is the draft revision of the FMEA, when it reaches the vessel owner for review and before it goes to Class. After Class has approved it with comments, it is much harder to change. For a new-build, findings can still be fixed in the FMEA and the proving trials programme before the vessel enters service.
Who uses it
Owners and new-build teams reviewing a draft FMEA from the yard or the FMEA contractor before Class submission. Operators checking the FMEA of a vessel in service, ahead of a charter, a vetting or a five-yearly review. DP assurance firms using an independent first pass so their engineers spend time on the findings that matter.
Frequently asked
Yes. TECHOP ODP 04 (D) FMEA Gap Analysis was the earlier MTS numbering. In the January 2021 renumbering it became TECHOP D-05 Rev1, and the flowchart in D-05 still refers to the old name.
No. D-05 checks whether the FMEA's scope and methodology meet published guidance, using the FMEA report as the source. It does not re-analyse the vessel's design, and neither does GapAnalyzer.
The FMEA report as PDF or DOCX, with the vessel's DP class and bus-tie configuration. Scanned reports are run through OCR first.
Yes, as a separate analysis against TECHOP D-02 (FMEA testing). GapAnalyzer also covers the DP operations manual (O-01) and annual DP trials (O-02).
Documents are stored on our own servers in the EU, no human reads them during analysis, and our model providers do not train on them. The details, including sub-processors and NDAs, are in the main FAQ.