The maritime industry is flooded with new regulations on a continual basis. These Regulations, in general, improve the safety and environmental sustainability of the industry. A reasonable argument can be made that the maritime industry leads the world in the adoption of international regulations and quite possibly is the international leader in environmental sustainability. The execution of these regulations falls squarely on the shoulders of the ship designers, the shipbuilders, the ship owners, the ship operators, the auditors (classification societies and consultants), and the enforcement of these regulations is the responsibility of the Flag States and the Port States. The last 30 or so years have shown quite a number of success stories in this execution/enforcement, but there continue to be some areas and even specific regulatory efforts that are problematic. Experience is starting to point towards specific systematic approaches that, once adopted, allow the execution and enforcement of international regulations to achieve faster convergence and, subsequently, faster stable adoption in the industry. This paper analyzes the system dynamic, provides specific examples, and provides a systematic approach and specific recommendations to all stake holders in achieving rapid and stable adoption of emerging international regulations. In particular this paper discusses overall environmental and associated system design and improvement, which is referred to as QESTH, and explores the use of Technical Memos in advancing the general state of the art. The concept of Tech Memos is explained by actual application in OWS issues and the advances in the state of the art in OWS and MARPOL compliance resulting from these tech memos are provided in this paper.

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