COLUMN | Budget Bingo: a handy game to pass the time during offshore companies' 2026 budget meetings [Offshore Accounts]

It is just so absurd that marine diesel engines require maintenance and, worse, extremely expensive overhauls every 20,000 hours, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take the vessels out of service for several weeks.

If only there was a way we could overcome the laws of mechanical engineering and just not do the work to save on cost. A few thousand extra hours can’t make a difference and will push the problem into 2027 when maybe a new fudgeworkaround can be found.

At this point you might mention that if the CEO thinks engine overhauls are expensive, he might want to consider that catastrophic engine failures tend to be even more expensive.

Or perhaps this is a lesson that needs to be learnt with two months of offhire time, and huge hull and machinery claim?

5. “Do we really need to use OEM parts?”

If we have to do those darned engine overhauls, there must be a way of doing it cheaper, surely?

Sure, Caterpillar, Bergen and Cummins and their peers are hugely respected companies with long track records of manufacturing precision equipment that works. But those original spare parts are quite pricey, and your CEO would like to look at going to that supplier in China whose boast is that their parts are “non-genuine” but almost as good as the real thing. Trust me, they come from the finest knock-off factory in Guanxi province, a world leader in imitation spares.

Or there is that place in Gadani Beach with an array of reconditioned parts from scrapped ships sitting in a humid warehouse ready to ship once the rust is chemically removed. Yes! Genius!

Best of all, the CEO can use the budget meeting to publicly pressure the Technical Director to go down that road, too.

When this is suggested, harness the power of silence… and score a point.

6. “Can we plan our dockings better? 28 days seems an unnecessarily long time.”

Indeed, if only drydockings were like Formula 1 tyre changes, over in seconds, efficient and predictable. Unfortunately, starting a drydocking on a ship is like opening Pandora’s box, and the process is rarely amenable to your CEO’s wishful thinking or your CFO’s one-size-fits-all spreadsheet.

If we wish it and dream it and enter 28 days in the spreadsheet, then maybe it will happen? Maybe.

Unfortunately, as the two recent fatal explosions at ASL Marine’s yard in Batam show, shipyards are dangerous places, and vessels, crews and budgets enter at their own peril.