Marine Fleet Management
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The UK-based maritime compliance and operations platform, BoatChecks, has secured an Innovate UK grant to accelerate the development of its digital vessel management system for small commercial craft.
The platform, developed by SAB Software, helps operators of vessels under 24 metres maintain compliance, safety, and operational efficiency in line with Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) regulations. The funding was awarded to SAB Software by Innovate UK, which is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), recognizing its potential for high-impact innovation and generating economic benefit for the UK.
The Innovate UK grant will be used to scale up the Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and accelerate the development of new tools. These include training records, dynamic risk assessments, live condition monitoring, and enhanced analytics, which will help create a more integrated compliance ecosystem for vessel owners and fleet managers.
John Peacock, BoatChecks’ Founding Director, commented, “We are thrilled to receive support from Innovate UK. This funding will allow us to expand our feature set, improve onboard usability, and deliver even greater value to operators of smaller commercial vessels, a sector that often lacks cost-effective, fit-for-purpose and robust compliance tools.
“This grant reflects the growing recognition that smaller vessel operators need modern, scalable tools to stay compliant and safe at sea. Our goal is to ensure the same digital transformation happening in large shipping is accessible to smaller fleets, without the complexity or high costs.”
BoatChecks already supports users across the UK maritime sector, including operators of workboats, passenger vessels, aquaculture service boats, and harbour vessels. Its current features include maintenance scheduling, defect tracking, crew certification monitoring, digital documentation storage for safety certificates and SOPs, voyage and fuel logging, and onboard mobile functionality for environments with low connectivity.
This announcement follows the platform’s adoption by UK fleet operator and port services provider Williams Shipping, which is now operating BoatChecks compliance software across its entire fleet nationwide.
