About the Vessel Operator Forum
The Vessel Operators Forum (VOF) is a platform for ship owners, operators, designers, yards, suppliers, R&D-institutes and regulatory agencies and class societies to exchange experience on operational aspects of ships and to discuss the common need for new technology for future ship operations. The Forum meetings will be combined with progress meetings of relevant joint industry projects (JIP’s) initiated and supported by the vessel operators. The VOF meeting will be organized by Marin and will be hosted by one of the members. VOF was officially launched on November 21, 2007 in Gothenburg at the occasion of the progress meetings of the Lashing@Sea JIP and the Service Performance Analysis (SPA) JIP hosted by Stena.

Meetings are organised every 6 months.

Mission – Vision - Strategy
Our Vision:
THE VOF will be a platform for ideas, where:

Technical issues can be identified, commonality gauged, and JIPs spin-off where independently supported.
Proposed JIPs can be presented to the right people in all the organizations involved at one time.

Our Strategy:

Focus on structural/marine issues (have not branched into discussions on processing, for instance)
Meet regularly, move the venue around the world to share the burden of travel
Present on topical issues (e.g. ), mix with information sharing and field trips to local areas of technical interest.
Invite organizations proposing JIPs to speak
Include the right organizations - designers, owners, fabricators, regulatory agencies, operators, class societies.
Liaison with related technical organizations, such as

Contact
For further details about the FPSO Research Forum, please contact:

Henk van den Boom (Organizer Vessel Operator Forum)
MAritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN)
P.O. Box 28
6700 AA Wageningen
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 317 493 353
Email: h.j.j.v.d.boom@marin.nl

Website
For more information on the Vessel Operator forum, details and registration for the upcoming meeting, meeting archives and a full list of (current, closed and proposed) JIPs, please visit the VOF website at:
www.vesseloperatorforum.com