Stephen Dudzic, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Vessel Fact. Image Credit: Vessel Fact

• Vessel Fact launched by Q88's former CTO Stephen Dudzic and three other ex-Q88 executives
• Single structured vessel record feeds questionnaires, certificates, vetting records, officer matrix, and load line data
• Aimed at data drift between HVPQ, SIRE 2.0, CDI, and charterer templates that surfaces at vetting or fails a fixture
• Soft launched September 2; funded by its partners with no outside investment

Four former executives of tanker questionnaire platform Q88 have launched Vessel Fact, a maritime compliance and vessel data platform built around a single trusted record for each ship.

The Galway-based company is led by chief executive Stephen Dudzic, who spent 15 years as Q88's chief technology officer.

The other founders, all also formerly of Q88, are chief operations officer Catherine Mancuso, chief sales officer Jeroen de Man, and chief customer officer Fotis Georgakopoulos.

Owners and operators currently re-enter the same vessel particulars into a range of questionnaire formats, including HVPQ, SIRE 2.0, CDI, and charterers' own templates, and the copies fall out of step as certificates and particulars change, the company said in an emailed press release on Thursday.

It argues that the resulting discrepancies tend to surface at vetting inspections or with a charterer's compliance desk, where they can delay or cost a fixture.

Vessel Fact holds certificates, questionnaire data, the officer matrix, load line particulars, and inspection records in one environment, populates questionnaire templates from that record, and tailors compliance packages for different counterparties so that charterers, brokers, and suppliers work from the same information.

"Vessel Fact provides a single, trusted source for managing 'vessel facts', helping ensure that the particulars, reports, and supporting evidence submitted to customers, vetting organisations, and other stakeholders are accurate, consistent, and readily available when critical operational decisions need to be made," said Dudzic.

The company is pitching its own people as part of the product, with customers supported by "the same experienced people they've come to know and trust in the industry, not an automated system or an outsourced ticket queue," said Mancuso.

Vessel Fact has taken no outside investment and is funded entirely by its partners, she added.

The platform was soft launched on September 2 and will be supported by a marketing campaign in the coming months, with demonstrations bookable through the company's website.

Q88 itself has been part of Veson Nautical since 2022.