BOSTON – The Coast Guard Regional Examination Center in Boston will transition to a National Maritime Center field unit Monday and will finalize a nation-wide system for processing mariners’ applications.
REC Boston is the last of 17 regional exam centers across the country that have unified their operations and centralized their processes with the over-all goals of improving customer service, credential processing time and consistency of products.
REC Boston will begin operating just as the previously upgraded REC’s where the staff helps mariners ensure their applications are ready for evaluation, administers examinations, issues U.S. Merchant Mariner credentials and conducts oversight of Coast Guard approved courses. Mariners will still verify their identity, get fingerprinted and take their tests at the REC. The REC will then send applications to the National Maritime Center, in Martinsburg, W. Va., for approval. The NMC will evaluate applications and issue credentials to the mariners.
“We’re taking 17 different offices which operated in 17 different ways and centralizing the process so mariners receive the same fast, consistent service no matter which office they go to,” said CDR Craig Swirbliss, the chief of operations and oversite division at the NMC.
For more information go to www.uscg.mil/nmc or http://homeport.uscg.mil/.
