Contact Information
The United States Coast Guard is one of the five military branches in the United States of America. Judging by its history and operations, it is probably the less popular one in the world. However, if you judge by the internal operations, it is by far the most useful armed force in the country. The US Coast Guard benefits from a wide variety of offices, services and centers other armed forces don’t have. One of them is Marine Safety Center. It is a support unit located in Washington, DC. The unit is under the strict command of the Maritime Safety, Security and Environmental Protection, along with all of its programs and services.
Marine Safety Center is structured in three different divisions. Each of them has a particular leadership and specific purposes. Since the center is mostly responsible for ship constructions, each division deals with different areas. The Engineering Division is probably the most important one. These experts give everything a small role and turn a bunch of parts into a working ship. The Tank Vessel is just as important, as well as the Hull Division. Although each division has its leadership, all the leaders respond in front of a common commander – Captain Patrick Little.
Mission
Marine Safety Center has the clear purpose to evaluate and deal with all the major decisions regarding ship constructions. As long as the ship is about to navigate in the United States waters, it has to go through this center. The experts will first evaluate the project and decide whether it is safe or not. The evaluation is followed by a whole bureaucratic process in order to accept the project. The mission goes on with both foreign and domestic ships, not to mention about the reparations, design or alteration issues. All the operations go by the laws and regulations in the United States of America.
Marine Safety Center is not a full military installation. It is a unit composed of both military officers and civilian workers. There are less than 30 officers leading the unit, 23 civilian workers, 16 contractors and a couple of reserve troops. Although the unit is relatively small, it is large enough to fulfill this mission. One of the objectives of the officials also implies providing the best facilities for these workers, whether they are native or they had to relocate there with their families.
History
Marine Safety Center is not a very old unit. In fact, it was officially created in 1986. However, it was not created from scratch. Instead, the authorities combined, renovated and merged multiple offices of the Merchant Marine Technical services from a few major cities. The targeted offices included the ones in San Francisco, New Orleans, New York and Cleveland. Therefore, the history may be short, but the history of the composing units is way longer. The mission has never changed since then. In fact, it is the reason for which these offices were merged in this new unit. These days, the center is on an ascending path and successfully fulfills its mission throughout the United States Coast Guard.
