JULY 2017 • FOGHORN 25 By Peter Lauridsen, PV A Regulatory Affairs Consultant Deja Vu All Over Again REGULATORYREPORT A s each FOGHORN editorial deadline rolls around, I find myself searching for mean- ingful, helpful material that can be addressed in a FOGHORN article. Sometimes work presents an event or interaction that begs to be written down and shared. Sometimes the regulatory beast rumbles and another new idea surfaces for consideration and/or im- plementation. Sometimes an event stirs the public to question or challenge the government’s stewardship of the public good. Sometimes an event roils the leg- islative juices and sweeping programs arise. In short, we live and work in a world where many events or initia- tives are triggered by stimuli beyond our control and often initially beyond our knowledge. The years of articles carries with them the lesson that sooner or later we will have to react, reshape, and reform to continue to be a viable public service. As I searched for ideas for this article from my previous articles, I was awed by the changes in our industry and the U.S. Coast Guard over the period of time since I have been with NAPVO/ PVA. I also saw how many concerns arose, abated, and arose again. We have lived with a Coast Guard that ebbed, flowed, contorted, was alternately friend or foe (think Prevention Through People and partners to security threat under “martial law” in about five years, but because we were regulated and regulator, we could not disengage or go to neutral corners to await the storm’s passage or grand reorganization du jour was digested and passed. For our part, we went from those people that put restaurants on the water through the casino boat building con- tortions to being key attractions in the public’s return to the waterfront, and now to many a city’s hope to alleviate road and metropolitan congestion. We went from backyard builders to the lifeblood of America’s small and medium vessel building shipyards. The Coast Guard of our interest went from single mission units and distinct technical/topical chains of command to blended commands called Marine Safety Offices to right-sizing the Coast Guard that threatened to gut personnel-intensive safety mission areas, to saviors of last resort and the glory of its Katrina performance, to reshuffling the deck and identifying prevention and response and then on to renumbering, renaming, and reor- ganizing on a never-ending search for something. Here we are today at a place where we have again found a degree of pre- dictable regulator/regulated relation- ships founded on our mutual interest and striving for safety of life, property, security, and environmental awareness. We have adapted to Coast Guard commands that have varying interest and expertise in our operations because at any one time it may be operation- ally or command focused on one of its other mission responsibilities. Our industry and even our concerns may be pushed to the back burner (Deepwater Horizon) or we feel like priority one such as when a marine accident occurs and it need not even be ours or in our area. The Coast Guard Marine Inspection mission, with our help re-resourced, refocused and began rebuilding a technically competent and led marine inspection capability somewhat iden- tifiable even within the multi-mission Sectors. So what is the point of all of this? Well, in the unknown environment of regulatory restraint and retrenchment and absent any other initiative, I may rework some old articles into then and now comparisons and maybe revisit some of our public policy issues to remember where we have been and how we got here. n HSC CODE ANNEX 10 ISO 9001:2008 Proud supplier of the New York Citywide Ferry Project