IMCA Membership Highlights 2025

As the end of the year approaches, we’d like to share some of the many highlights from our work over the last 12 months.

In 2025 IMCA continued to work tirelessly on Members' behalf to improve the safety and performance of the offshore contracting industry, to support our sector as it meets the challenge to operate more sustainably, and to present a unified voice to regulators, national governments, and other key stakeholders.

In May, we published our Annual Safety Report, based for the first time on more than 1bn hours of data from almost 200 contributing companies, to provide Members with critical insights into trends in health, safety, and security in the workplace. And, we issued 21 safety flashes to Members, covering 99 separate incidents and potential hazards, to help prevent incidents occurring elsewhere in the industry.

Over the last 12 months, we have published 43 new and revised Guidance documents to IMCA’s industry-leading Technical Library, and issued 24 Information Notes on safety, technical, regulatory, and other issues.

IMCA’s eCMID scheme – the global safety management health check for offshore vessels – saw a significant rise in inspection activity. Accredited vessel inspectors (AVIs) completed 1,896 vessel inspections in 2024/25, a 16% increase year-on-year.

And we supported members to respond to enhance the sustainability of their operations, issuing guidance on reducing scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, and holding a high level seminar on incorporating circular economy principles into Members’ supply chains.

We increased the reach of our advocacy work in 2025, providing the collective voice of marine contractors to ensure that governments and regulators understand the essential role and contribution that our industry makes to global prosperity and security.

IMCA has held observer status at the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization, headquartered in London, since 1999, and engaged extensively on the IMO’s emerging net-zero framework, as well as on regulations covering safety, environmental protection, operational standards, and support for offshore workers.

To support our engagement with the European Union, we commissioned the first ever economic impact assessment of Europe’s marine contractors, and presented the findings – that our industry generates €80bn for the economy each year, and supports 490,000 highly skilled jobs – to MEPs and European Commission officials at a well-attended Brussels briefing.

We launched a new People Committee to address the significant challenge of attracting and supporting the thousands of skilled, diverse, and adaptable employees that our industry will need over the coming decade.

Bringing expertise from across the globe and across disciplines, the People Committee works with stakeholders to promote careers in marine contracting; to connect, inspire, and grow the next generation of industry talent; and to shares insights and promote best practices that foster positive change within the industry.

We continued to develop our continuing professional development (CPD)-accredited training programmes. Building on the success of our Diving Supervisor CPD service, which now has more than 1,500 users, we launched IMCA Diving CPD Mix, opening IMCA’s industry leading training to the whole diving industry, including non-IMCA diving contractors, offshore energy company personnel, and regulators such as health and safety inspectors. Our DP CPD service also went from strength to strength, with almost 10,000 DP officers now using the IMCA CPD app to maintain their professional status. 

The 2025 Member Survey was our most comprehensive to date, with more than 500 individuals from 272 member companies sharing their views. The responses came from every region and discipline, making this survey the most representative snapshot yet of what the global marine contracting community expects from its association.

We were pleased to see that 85% of respondents were ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with their IMCA membership. We achieve an average recommendation score of 8.5/10, with a net promoter score of 46.1.

However, 19% reported they were not sure how to engage with IMCA, and told us that they struggled to attend IMCA’s in-person events. . This is a gap we are addressing directly. We have launched a new series of online IMCA Member briefings to help Members understand and access the benefits of IMCA Membership, and we will explore other ways of making our events more accessible in 2026.

In 2025 was our busiest yet for in-person events. We brought Members together at 26 regional meetings, technical seminars, and conferences, across every region of the globe.

We will host the IMCA Global Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in November this year, bringing the global offshore contracting sector together in Asia for the first time since 2012, where we will also announce the winners of this year’s IMCA Awards. Book now to secure your place.

To ensure we speak for the sector globally, we grew our teams working in the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and India, adding additional on-the-ground resources and partnering with local associations. We built on last year’s successful engagement in Africa to support the continent’s growing offshore industries and visited Japan for the first time in IMCA history to meet new Members and support our existing Members there.

The IMCA secretariat increased its resources across its core divisions – diving, dynamic positioning, ROV, and survey – to enhance the support we offer to Members.