What TECHOP O-01 is
The MTS DP Committee published TECHOP O-01 (Rev1, January 2021) on the content of DP operations manuals. Its starting point is a finding from reviews of a significant number of manuals: wide variation in the content, quality of information and usefulness, and often a lack of pertinent information (O-01 §2.1.2).
There is no single standard for writing a DP operations manual. Some class societies have requirements, but they lack consistency and standardisation, and IMCA M103 and M109 cover only parts of the subject (§3.1.1, §3.1.3, §3.1.5). O-01 brings the guidance together and adds what was missing, in particular the requirements of the industrial mission (§3.1.7, §3.1.8).
Its gap analysis checklist was compiled from six sources (§7.1.2):
- MTS DP Operations Guidance
- MTS TECHOP ODP 05, the earlier name of O-01 itself
- IMO MSC/Circ.645
- IMCA M103
- IMCA M109
- Classification Society Rules
ODP 05 or O-01? They are the same document. Under the earlier MTS numbering it was TECHOP ODP 05, and O-01 still lists "MTS TECHOP ODP 05 (this document)" among the checklist's sources. If you have been asked for an ODP 05 gap analysis, this is the one.
What the checklist covers
O-01 sets out what a manual should contain: company philosophy, with DP identified as a safety critical element (§4.1.1); equipment, processes and people (§5.2 to §5.4); vessel-specific requirements such as the redundancy concept, position references, sensors, ASOG/WSOG and post-failure capability (§5.5); and information specific to the industrial mission (§5.6). The O-01 checklist groups its 99 rows under four headings (§7.3); 8 of the rows are sub-headings, which GapAnalyzer marks N/A and assesses through the requirements beneath them:
Each item carries an ID and the source of the requirement, so the reviewer and the person revising the manual can find the context behind it (§7.1.3).
How findings are graded
O-01 gives each item one of four answers: Yes, Partial, No or N/A, depending on whether the subject is adequately covered, partially covered, not covered or not applicable to the manual (§7.1.5). GapAnalyzer uses the same four verdicts:
| O-01 answer | Meaning in O-01 | GapAnalyzer verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | Subject adequately covered | YES |
| Partial | Partially covered, could be expanded or revised | PARTIAL |
| No | Not covered at all | NO |
| N/A | Not applicable to the manual under analysis | N/A |
O-01 defines no summary figure, and it states plainly that the analysis does not give a pass or fail judgement on the manual (§7.2.2). GapAnalyzer adds no score of its own. It reports the green, yellow and red shares of applicable items, using the method MTS gives for annual DP trials, with N/A items subtracted first (O-02 Appendix D.1, item 10).
Why an O-01 review is hard to do well
The checklist items are short: one line each, written for a reviewer who already knows DP operations. Deciding whether a manual "adequately covers" the watch handover, the ASOG or the post-failure capability of the vessel takes a DP specialist reading the whole manual, item by item. That is days of expert time, and the specialist first has to be available.
It is also hard to do consistently. In our MarCompBench study, three reference assessments of the same DP operations manual against the same 99-item checklist, including a professional gap analysis by a maritime consultancy, reached the same verdict on between 37% and 51% of items, depending on the pair. Agreement across all three was low (Krippendorff's alpha 0.21). Reviewer variation is a property of the task, not of any one reviewer.
| Manual O-01 review | GapAnalyzer | |
|---|---|---|
| Time | Days of specialist time, plus lead time to book one | About eight minutes from upload |
| Criteria | Whatever the reviewer brings to a one-line item | Written acceptance criteria for every item, the same on every run |
| Traceability | Comments in a spreadsheet | Each verdict cites the manual sections it relied on; click through to the source page |
| Deliverable | Filled MTS O-01 workbook and a summary | Filled MTS O-01 workbook, PDF report and green/yellow/red shares |
What you get
The MTS companion spreadsheet with the cross-reference to the manual, the verdict and a comment on every row: the same artefact an assurance firm would hand you.
Each finding names the sections of the manual it relied on. Open one and the source page sits beside the assessment, so findings can be checked rather than trusted.
Each one-line checklist item is expanded into written acceptance criteria, so every manual is judged against the same documented standard rather than whatever a given reviewer happens to know.
A manual that points to a controlled document, such as the FMEA, the SMS or the ASOG, for a subject is credited for that coverage where the criteria allow it, rather than marked down for not repeating it.
A list for continual improvement
O-01 is clear about what the result is for. Items marked No or Partial are revisited by those responsible for the manual and reviewed as part of continual improvement (§7.2.3). It also warns that the analyst may lack other vessel documentation, so an item marked No or Partial may in fact be not applicable or adequately covered (§7.2.4). The person who knows the vessel makes that final call.
GapAnalyzer produces the complete, cited list in minutes. The people responsible for the manual spend their time on the findings, not on working through the checklist row by row.
Who uses it
Owners and operators checking a manual before an audit, a vetting or a new contract, or after a revision. New-build and conversion teams writing a first manual against the guidance. DP assurance firms using an independent first pass so their engineers spend time on the findings that matter.
Frequently asked
Yes. ODP 05 was the earlier MTS name. The document is now TECHOP O-01 Rev1 (January 2021), and its gap analysis section still lists "MTS TECHOP ODP 05 (this document)" among its sources.
No. O-01 states that the analysis does not give a pass or fail judgement (§7.2.2), and neither does GapAnalyzer. You get the verdicts, the citations and the green, yellow and red shares.
No. It is a gap analysis of the DP operations manual, not of the vessel or its systems (§7.2.1). For the FMEA and trials programmes, GapAnalyzer runs separate analyses against TECHOP D-05, D-02 and O-02.
The DP operations manual as PDF or DOCX. Scanned manuals are run through OCR first.
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.