For waterway managers

The party responsible for maintaining the appropriate condition of waterways and aids to navigation is the waterway manager. According to the Act on the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (935/2018), Traficom is responsible for taking care of transport regulation, permit, approval, register and supervision tasks.

Waterway maintenance and defect reports

Traficom’s supervision of waterway managers encompasses monitoring waterway maintenance operations and notices of defects, sending reminders and requests for information to waterway managers and carrying out on-site inspections and audits.

As part of supervision, waterway managers are asked to report the location and condition checks that they carry out on aids to navigation to Traficom regularly.

Fairway decisions

A waterway manager needs permission from the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency for the construction, installation and maintenance of aids to navigation. Changing waterway and aid to navigation information also requires this permission, which is issued in the form of a so-called fairway decision.

A fairway decision is a permit decision that is used to grant permission for the installation of aids to navigation and confirm the details of a public channel (section 49 of the Water Traffic Act). The purpose of the procedure is to approve the information reported to Traficom and ensure that information on public channels and aids to navigation are added to nautical charts.

A fairway decision can concern the designation and installation of new public channels and aids to navigation or the changing or removal of existing ones. Any new information concerning public channels and aids to navigation is also confirmed with a fairway decision. You can apply for a fairway decision using the fairway proposal form. After the decision is issued, the relevant channel and aids to navigation can be presented on printed nautical charts and ENCs. Decisions are announced in Notices to Mariners.

Waterway signs and light signals

The installation of waterway signs and light signals in a public channel is the responsibility of the waterway manager. In areas outside of public channels, the party responsible for the installation of waterway signs and light signals is the municipality. The installation and maintenance of aids to navigation, waterway signs and light signals is supervised by Traficom, which also issues more detailed regulations concerning aids to navigation, waterway signs and light signals.

The waterway manager must notify Traficom of the installation of a waterway sign and a light signal along with their positioning data. Traficom must also be notified of the removal of a waterway sign or light signal or any changes to their information.

Traficom issues regulations on the marking and lighting of channels and the maritime buoyage system used and the names, structure, meaning, and colour and light characters of aids to navigation.

Be sure to also familiarise yourself with the classification of waterways. Waterway maintenance must be carried out in accordance with the classification of the waterway and associated requirements. The classification of a waterway is determined based primarily on what kind of traffic the waterway was built for, meaning what kind of waterborne traffic the waterway is intended to primarily serve.

For more information, please see the link below.

Quality requirements for hydrographic survey projects

Waterway managers procuring hydrographic survey data must define quality requirements for the survey data to be produced based on the current standard for hydrographic surveys. The information on public channels displayed on nautical charts published by Traficom must be based on the results of hydrographic surveys carried out in accordance with the instructions. In Finland, the surveys to ensure safety of fairways must be based on multi-beam surveys and on bar sweeping surveys in fairway areas with critical water depths.