The International Safety Management (ISM) Code requires Owners (or their appointed Managers) to put in place management systems to ensure that the yacht is operated with the utmost regard to safety and pollution prevention. It will require each yacht to have a safety and environmental policy, well defined lines of communication between staff on the yacht and ashore and procedures for internal audits and management reviews. 

The ISM Code is based on the IS0 9000 system. IS0 9000 is a quality assurance system to which companies comply in order to assure their customers of a quality product or service. It is prevalent in shipyards that work on governments’ contracts since they usually specify it as a pre-requisite of a bid. It is a system whereby the functionality of the company is documented with a focus on quality. The company is then audited to ensure that they adhere to this system in order to obtain a certificate i.e. they write down what they do and how this achieves a quality product or service and then an auditor comes and checks that they are doing what they said they were doing. 

ISM is a safety and pollution prevention system, where you write down how you are going to operate the vessel to achieve a high safety and pollution prevention standards and then the flag state authority checks that you are doing what you said you were going to do. For anyone familiar with the MCA Code, they can be compared thus; the MCA Code of Practice is a set of predominantly technical regulations with a few requirements for operational procedures and crew training. ISM asks that a Safety Management System be put in place which shows how the yacht will be operated. A vessel cannot be operated in accordance with the rules and regulations if the technical aspects are not in order. For example a fire drill cannot be conducted unless alarms, hoses and fire pumps are in place. The MCA Code and the ISM Code are therefore concerned about the same rules and regulations but from different standpoints; MCA Code from the technical stand-point, ISM Code from the operational standpoint.