Eurodam has 4,528 Keys

Did you ever wonder how the different doors, pantries, lockers and spaces with doors are being locked on board? Of course, you need things to open these spaces and that is the beauty of a key. The Eurodam, being the first in its class, boasts a huge collection of keys. All in all it has 4,528 keys (four sets total). Organizing, tagging and labeling the keys to match the correct door is a huge undertaking.

This has been done on the previous ships and it is done by the guest relations manager in collaboration with the chief officer who, in the end, is responsible for safekeeping the keys. The keys were manufactured by Trioving, a company from Norway that has been supplying the ship’s keys for many HAL newbuilds and is also doing it for the Eurodam delivery.

The first step is to ensure that all tags were ordered via the chief officer. Every department has its own color of key tag.

Below is the listing of all colors and their departments:

DESIGNATED COLORS PER DEPARTMENT
LIGHT BLUE: Engine
DARK BLUE: Deck
RED: Emergency
YELLOW: Housekeeping
WHITE: Hotel/Administration
PURPLE: Food & Beverage
GREEN: Medical
ORANGE: Entertainment/Cruise

MASTER KEYS AND SUB-MASTER KEYS
With the individual keys come the master keys. These are under the care of the chief officer, and he signs them off to the different departments. There are different kinds of keys, as follows:

The EMK is an overall master and is used as an emergency master key. This key will open deadbolt locks on cabins and all lockers, etc.

The GMK is known as the general master key and is for all the doors, offices, lockers, steward stations, etc., and any lock on board that is not a cabin.

The ECO key is the yard-level key for all cabins. Once the ship starts to sail the ECO key should be moved up a notch to the next level, making the ECO useless to add security as ECOs often get lost during cleaning or loading, etc. That is the worst-case scenario, as it is imperative those who sign for a master key treat it like gold and look after it.

Then the next step is to check with the locking plan of the ship and the Trioving Excel file, and compare them. Here, all the spaces that need to be locked that were on the Trioving list, but not indicated on the locking plan and vice versa have to be noted. Afterward the chief officer will be advised of any irregularities and then Trioving will be notified. Other plans like fire door plans of the ship sometimes have to be consulted as well to get the accurate door location and name. Having done that, there will be spaces that will come out which were not in the Trioving list to have keys, but need to be locked as per the locking plan.

Next will come the delivery of the hard product, the keys! These keys come in little baggies, in sets of four per deck. The keys are cross-checked with the Trioving Excel file and the Trioving key delivery file, and most of the time there are some spaces that do not have keys made and Trioving has to be advised of this.

After the entire cross-checking is done, the merging of the labels for the correct keys follows and then the labels will be printed. Following this comes the major task of inserting the correct labels into the correct key tag per department per deck.

For so many deliveries now, the loading team helps to complete this project. A group of four guys from the loading team sits with the GRM and starts tagging the keys. This takes at least two to three weeks for the whole roster of keys to be tagged, provided that all tags are completed, since pending tag arrival could also impede the process.

Once all keys are labeled, they are placed on a ring. All keys are arranged per the key file list per department per deck. Then, the lengthy and careful task of cross-checking again for the final time is done to ensure that each department got the right key on the ring itself before closing off the ring. The chief officer gets a copy of all the keys, plus the cabinet keys and the padlock keys. In totality, all the keys that he gets end up in a huge box due to the huge number of keys.

When all of the above process is done, the distribution of the keys to the different heads of departments follows. Each head of department will sign off that they received their keys. The Engine Department gets the biggest chunk of keys, followed by the Housekeeping Department from the Hotel Department, and the Medical Department gets the smallest number of keys, 12 kinds of four sets, to be exact. This culminates the key project, which basically is the grand task of labeling the right key for the correct lockable space.