SMS Builder isn't made by a faceless software company. It's built and run by one person who works on the water — for the operators who do the same.
Hello — I'm James O'Connell, the person behind SMS Builder. I built this tool because I needed it myself.
Anyone who has prepared a Safety Management System for an AMSA or Maritime NZ survey knows the job. Pages of sections, the same vessel details typed over and over, equipment serial numbers copied off cylinders and data plates, and the quiet worry that you've missed something a surveyor will pick up. I did it by hand, more than once, and every time I thought the same thing: a computer should be doing this.
So I built one. You enter your vessel once, and SMS Builder writes the document around it — every required section, auto-populated. Photograph a fire extinguisher, a life raft or an EPIRB and it reads the model, serial number and expiry and files it in the right place. The result is a print-ready SMS you can hand to a surveyor.
SMS Builder is designed the way a real SMS is actually used — by the person standing on the deck and by the surveyor checking it. That's why every vessel detail you enter flows automatically into the correct AMSA Marine Order 504 / NSCV and Maritime NZ Part 19 sections, instead of leaving you to copy it around. It's the difference between software shaped by people who understand the survey and software that just gives you blank boxes to fill in.
I'm not a software developer who decided maritime looked like a good market. I've spent 23 years in the marine industry. I'm a qualified boat builder and marine engineer, I hold my Master <24m Near Coastal (M24) and my Marine Engine Driver Grade 2 (MED 2), and for the last 11 years I've run my own vessel management company. SMS Builder grew straight out of that work — it's the safety management system I was already preparing for the vessels I look after, turned into a tool anyone can use.
When you use SMS Builder you're not dealing with a call centre on the other side of the world. It's a small, independent Australian business that I run myself. I understand commercial vessels and the National System because I've worked in the industry for over two decades and still manage vessels today — and if something isn't right, I fix it, often the same week.
SMS Builder is an independent product. It isn't affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of AMSA or Maritime New Zealand — it's a tool that helps you produce documentation designed to meet their requirements. Where other products are mentioned elsewhere on this site, they're compared honestly, and their names belong to their respective owners.