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What does it take to train tomorrow's marine scientists? Within the University of Plymouth's state-of-the-art Marine Station, students are offered world-class tuition in a wide range of subjects and have the opportunity to work alongside internationally renowned researchers. They also have direct access to the marine environment and the marvels it has to offer both on, and under, the ocean surface.

Opened in 2015 by HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, the building overlooks Plymouth Sound, the UK’s first National Marine Park. As well as teaching spaces, there is a wet lab for sample examination and analysis, a seawater aquarium, field equipment storage, and wet changing areas. The Marine Station is also home to the University’s fleet of vessels, ranging from research boats used for fieldwork to smaller autonomous craft being developed for hydrographic and other surveys.

Unique to higher education in the UK, the Marine Station is also a centre of excellence for diving that enables students to acquire professional diver qualifications and develop valuable industry-relevant skills. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) dictates the mandatory HSE SCUBA course content, but the University has significantly expanded on this. Using its own experience with industry and scientific research, it has developed a Scientific Diving module that considerably increases student experience, expertise and employability.

With this in mind, the University was looking for an asset management system that could track all its diving equipment and decided to invest in our content management system NAMS. This innovative application will not only allow the University to track the maintenance requirements for all its diving-related equipment but, with individual encrypted user logins, it can also be assured its data will be safe and secure at all times.

NAMS is a very versatile and user-friendly application and, although initially developed for the commercial diving industry, we have seen a lot more inshore diving companies and even aquaculture companies signing up. This is the first time it has been used in the higher education sector.

The application is the first diving asset management system of its kind not only coordinating equipment maintenance but offering reduced administration tasks for dive teams, compliance with international diving equipment requirements and project management scheduling.