nikosophia

Systems

Nikosophia is software: a governance system for shipowners and the fiduciaries who act for them. We run it for you as a hosted service, or install it in your own environment.

The parties you are accountable to You, the owner, at the centre, accountable to six groups, each receiving something different from the same records: regulators and governments, filings and certificates; lenders and financiers, covenant certificates; insurers and underwriters, evidence their conditions are met; charterers and operating partners, emissions figures and records; class societies and vetting organisations, survey and inspection records; parent companies and families, where the company stands. You the owner Regulators and governments filings and certificates Lenders and financiers covenant certificates Insurers and underwriters evidence their conditions are met Charterers and operating partners emissions figures and records Class societies and vetting organisations survey and inspection records Parent companies and families where the company stands The parties you are accountable to You, the owner, at the centre, accountable to six groups, each receiving something different from the same records: regulators and governments, filings and certificates; lenders and financiers, covenant certificates; insurers and underwriters, evidence their conditions are met; charterers and operating partners, emissions figures and records; class societies and vetting organisations, survey and inspection records; parent companies and families, where the company stands. You the owner Regulators and governments filings and certificates Lenders and financiers covenant certificates Insurers and underwriters evidence their conditions are met Charterers and operating partners emissions figures and records Class societies and vetting organisations survey and inspection records Parent companies and families where the company stands

The product

At a glance

What you get
Your own Nikosophia system: a web application that you, your staff and the fiduciaries you authorise use in a browser, in English or Greek.
Hosted service
We host and run your Nikosophia system on our infrastructure, as a subscription. Each company is its own tenant, with its data encrypted under its own key. A company that wants a system of its own, apart from any other tenant, can have one hosted for it alone.
In your own environment
We install the same system on your infrastructure or in your cloud account, in the jurisdiction you choose, and it works the same as the hosted service.
Included
The rulebooks for your areas of duty, kept current as the regulations change; every software update; and support from our analysts and engineers.
Setting up
Our analysts work with you to set down your company's duties, how each is met and who is responsible for it, and load the regulations that apply to your fleet. Workflows that connect to your own operational systems are written for your company as a scoped piece of work.

Sight

You can see every duty your company carries, who it is owed to, and when it next falls due. For each one you can see how it is being met, who is responsible, and the evidence gathered so far. Every figure can be traced to the document it was taken from. When something falls behind, you see it straight away, with how long it has been behind and who is dealing with it.

A ship's bridge at night, its navigation consoles lit

Control

Working with our analysts, you set your company's rules in your Nikosophia system: which duties it carries, how each is met and who is responsible for it. From those rules Nikosophia generates the policies and procedures manual your managers and crews work to. Where your managers use operational software such as OneOcean and it offers an API, Nikosophia also sets that software's configuration. When a rule changes, Nikosophia issues a revised manual, updates the configuration, and records who made the change and when.

The stern of a ship riding high in calm water, its rudder clear of the surface

Reporting

Each party you are accountable to wants something different. Regulators want filings, lenders want covenant certificates, insurers want evidence that their conditions are met, and your board and family want to know where the company stands. Nikosophia produces every filing, certificate and report from your company's one set of records, so the emissions figure in your regulatory filing is the figure in your charterer's invoice and your lender's certificate. A named person at your company signs each regulatory filing, and you can require a second person to approve it.

A woman presenting charts on a large screen to colleagues at a meeting table

Sovereignty

Your Nikosophia system runs on our servers or on yours, in the jurisdiction you choose. You, or an auditor you appoint, can compare the running system with its written specification and confirm that the two match. Your records, and the working behind every figure, stay with the company when staff, consultants or managers change.

Piraeus from the air: the yacht marina and breakwater, the city, and the sea beyond

Fiduciaries

The work of tracking what the company owes, and proving it, can be delegated, and in most family companies it is, to someone close: a son or daughter, or a trusted member of staff. They work in your Nikosophia system with the authority you give them, and you follow their work in as much detail as you choose. The work can also go outside the company. A corporate service provider may administer your shipowning company with your authority, working in your Nikosophia system. A management company can run its own Nikosophia system for its own duties and across its clients, and gives you access to the records your agreement covers. Whoever does the work, you remain accountable, and you remain the one who decides how the company is run.

A woman working on a laptop at a high office window over a city

Succession

Nikosophia holds a current, written account of how your company is run and why. When the company passes to your children or to a buyer, the account passes with it, and they can take up the company's duties without first having to reconstruct them.

Three generations of a family laughing together outdoors in the sun

Features

What the product does

Rulebooks
We supply a rulebook for each regulation in your areas of duty and keep it current as the regulation changes. Each rule states the duty, when it applies, how you have chosen to meet it, and who is responsible for it. Nikosophia keeps every version of every rule, with the dates each version applied and who changed it.
Contradiction check
When a rule is added or changed, Nikosophia compares it with every other rule before the change takes effect. If two rules apply to the same situation and require different things, such as two deadlines for the same report, Nikosophia refuses the change and names both rules, and our analysts bring the conflict to you to decide which applies. Why, and the published work behind it.
Duty tracking
Each ship's duties are listed on the Obligations screen with their deadlines, the method for meeting each and the person responsible. The Assessment screen lists the current state of every duty for every ship and for the company, worst first, and updates as records arrive.
Document reading
AI reads scans, PDFs and emails, such as bunker delivery notes, invoices and certificates, and links each value it extracts to the place on the page it came from. A person at your company confirms every value in a filing against its source, and Nikosophia calculates every figure by fixed arithmetic.
Records
Nikosophia adds every change as a new entry and keeps the earlier entries as they were. Every figure can be recalculated from its records, and links to the documents it came from and to the edition of the regulation's conversion factors in force when it was calculated.
Outputs
Regulatory filings, covenant certificates, evidence for insurers, board and family reports, and the policies and procedures manuals for fiduciary and business operations. Every filing comes with a dossier, frozen when the filing is assembled: what was owed, under which rules, from which documents, computed how, and signed by whom and when.
Approvals
A named person at your company signs each filing in Nikosophia. Where your rules require a second approver, Nikosophia accepts the approval only from someone other than the people who entered or confirmed a figure in that filing.
Integration
Workflows written for your company take information from your operational systems, such as OneOcean and NOZZLE, and from electronic record books, and where their APIs allow, set their configuration and watch them.
Deployment
Every Nikosophia system, hosted or in your own environment, is described by one specification file listing each software component and its exact version. You, or an auditor you appoint, can run a check that compares the running system with that file.
Security
Each company's data is encrypted with its own key, held on a separate key server. Significant events, such as a changed rule, a confirmed figure or an approved filing, are written to an audit log in which each entry carries a fingerprint of the entry before it, so changing or deleting any entry breaks every fingerprint after it.

What Nikosophia covers

Scope

Nikosophia holds the duties that the regulations on safety management, certificates and surveys, crew, emissions, environmental records and sanctions place on your company, and keeps them current as the regulations change. The duties that apply to your fleet are in place from the day you start. The duties you owe under your loan agreements, insurance policies and charters, and any standards you have adopted, are added when you want them.

Safety and security
The ISM Code and ISPS: the safety management system, the Document of Compliance and Safety Management Certificate, audits, the Designated Person Ashore and the ship security plan.
Certificates and surveys
The statutory certificates every ship carries, and their survey windows.
Crew
MLC 2006 and STCW: employment agreements, hours of rest, certificates of competency and their revalidation.
Emissions and fuel
EU-ETS, FuelEU Maritime and EU MRV, CII and SEEMP Part III, and IMO DCS.
Environmental records
The Inventory of Hazardous Materials, and port reception facility records.
Sanctions
Sanctions and counterparty screening.
Lenders and insurers
Covenant certificates under your loan agreements, and the conditions of your cover.
Charterers
Duties under your charters, undertakings given during vetting, and your RightShip and SIRE standing.
Board and family
A regular report of where the company stands.