Tokyo: Leading Japan-based classification society Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (ClassNK) elected Noboru Ueda (pictured) as its chairman and president earlier this month. Ueda has a long and varied history with the society, having joined it 39 years ago in the hull department. He has held roles in ClassNK’s Okayama and Imabari branch offices as well as its head office, where he worked in the Development Department, in charge of the technical rules for the society.

He also spent five years in the US where he established and served as the General Manager for the society’s office in Seattle. Having returned to ClassNK’s head office in Japan, he was made a managing director in 2002 and executive vice president in 2006 prior to his latest appointment.

The new ClassNK chairman and president has also had a decade of experience as a member of the Tanker Forum’s working group and was a member of the team that formulated the Japanese National Regulations for Ships Carrying Nuclear Waste and Liquid Dangerous Goods.

Ueda is a structural specialist with a particular emphasis on oil tankers, chemical tankers and gas carriers and received the Best Paper award from the Society of Naval Architects of Japan in 2003 for his paper, “Development of a Ship Structural Strength Assessment System and Its Guidelines”, which presented a detailed overview of the ClassNK PrimeShip suite of programs and systems.

ClassNK currently has some 6,800 ships exceeding 153m gt on its register and is the only classification society in the world to have surpassed the 150m gt mark. It offers a broad spectrum of services as a totally independent third party, non-profit organization and also conducts a wide range of statutory surveys on behalf of flag States in addition to technical consultancy, quality and environmental system assessments, and an extensive range of cutting-edge R&D projects.  [27/03/08]