MBN Glossary

The language of maritime contract governance, in plain terms. Every name here matches the platform exactly, so what you read is what you'll use.

What is a tender?

In contracting, a tender is a formal, published request for a defined scope of work. A vessel publishes exactly what it needs done. Qualified service providers bid against that same scope. The vessel awards one of them under recorded authority.

It's the discipline of institutional and government procurement, brought to maritime contracting. Two things set it apart from a quote traded over email: the scope is written once and identical for every bidder, and every step (the bids, the clarifications, the award) stays on one record, attributable and dated.

One note for the yacht world: on MBN, a tender is the contract process, not the vessel's tender boat.

Who's on MBN

MBN governs three organization types, plus the people inside them and the officer who reviews them.

Vessel: An organization that owns or operates a vessel and publishes tenders for the work it needs done.
Service Provider: An organization that receives tenders, bids on them, and performs or supplies the work: shipyards, contractors, vendors, and specialists.
Management Company: An organization that manages a portfolio of vessels and governs contracts across the fleet. Management Company accounts arrive in MBN's next phase, around January 2027.
Admin: The single role that holds authority for an organization and represents its legal entity on MBN. Every organization has exactly one.
Co-Admin: An operational-admin capability granted on top of a functional role. Manages members, particulars, and tenders, but not billing or ownership transfer.
Captain: A required vessel role, assigned during vessel onboarding alongside the Admin and Chief Engineer.
Chief Engineer: A required vessel role, typically the person who defines and oversees the engineering scope of the work.
Vessel Manager: A vessel role for the person managing the vessel's operations. Can be part of a managing company or independent.
Commercial Manager: A required service-provider role when the organization operates as a Contractor.
Sales: A required service-provider role when the organization operates as a Vendor.
Project Manager, Finance, Field Technician: Additional service-provider roles in the data model, assigned as an organization needs them.
MBN Officer: An MBN staff reviewer who reviews each onboarding submission and approves it, requests changes, or rejects it.

Service-provider capability

When a service provider registers, it declares how it will operate. The choice sets which roles it assigns and how tenders route to it.

Contractor: A service provider that performs engineering work and service execution.
Vendor: A service provider that supplies goods only, with no execution workflows.
Contractor + Vendor: A service provider that both executes engineering work and supplies goods.

The tender lifecycle

Tender: A published request for a defined scope of work. See 'What is a tender?' above.
Tender types: Service (labor and execution), Goods Procurement (parts and equipment), Service + Goods (both), and Sub-contracting (a service provider tendering work to other providers).
Tender status: Where a tender sits in its lifecycle: Announcement, Open, Bidding Closed, Under Review, Awarded, In Progress, Completed (or Expired / Cancelled).
Bid (Proposal): A service provider's priced response to a tender, submitted against the published scope. Its states are Draft, Submitted, Withdrawn, Accepted, or Rejected.
Award: The vessel's recorded decision to accept one bid, attributable to a specific authority on the vessel side and dated.
Clarification: A question or answer recorded on the tender itself, not in a side email. Private between the asking provider and the vessel.
Site Visit: An optional, scheduled visit for a bidder to see the job before quoting, arranged and confirmed on the record.
MBN Tender Distribution: The routing engine that emails each tender to the service providers whose engineering category and service sub-region match the published scope. No vendor list to maintain on either side.
Preferred Market Bidding: A private first round in which a vessel invites a curated set of trusted providers before wider publication, without leaving the governed record.
Guest invitation: A magic-link invite that lets a specific provider bid on a tender without maintaining a full account.
Tender urgency: Standard tenders run a bid window of up to 7 days; Shipyard Preparation tenders run up to 30 days, with an estimated start date required at publish.

How work is matched

A tender reaches a service provider only when two things line up: an engineering category the provider serves, and a service sub-region the provider covers.

Engineering category: One of MBN's standard work categories (for example Mechanical & engine systems, Electrical systems, HVAC & refrigeration, Water & sanitation systems). Providers select 1 to 5; each tender is tagged to the categories it needs.

Service regions & sub-regions

MBN organizes coverage into 4 region groups and 14 sub-regions. A service provider serves multiple sub-regions within a single group (never across groups); a vessel operates at the region-group level. Matching is by engineering category and service sub-region together.

Mediterranean

Western Mediterranean
Italian Peninsula & Tyrrhenian
Adriatic
Eastern Mediterranean

USA

Southeast USA / Florida
Northeast USA
Gulf Coast USA
West Coast USA

Caribbean

Bahamas + Turks & Caicos
Greater Antilles
Leeward Islands
Windward Islands
Southern Caribbean

Central America

Central America (Panama, Costa Rica Pacific)

Active coverage today is the United States and the Caribbean, with the Mediterranean and Central America built into the platform for expansion.

Vessel identity

Vessel type: The vessel's category: Motor Yacht, Sailing Yacht, Tugboat, Ferry, Offshore Supply Vessel, or Supply Vessel. It also sets the M/Y, S/Y, or M/V name prefix.
Vessel class: The classification society, where applicable: Lloyd's Register, American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), RINA, DNV, Bureau Veritas, ClassNK, Other, or Not in Class.
Equipment library: A vessel's catalog of onboard machinery, entered once with real specs, then attached to tenders as 'equipment in scope.'
Parts list: A vessel's catalog of parts, used to build the line items on a goods tender.

Onboarding

Registering an organization is a guided, autosaving flow with a fixed set of stages.

Onboarding stages: The five-step tracker every organization moves through: Registration, Profile, Roles, Summary, and the Awaiting Approval Suite.
Awaiting Approval Suite: The final stage, where invitations go out, each member accepts their role, and the Admin submits the application for MBN officer review.
Role acceptance: The status of each assigned member: Added, then Invited (email sent), then Accepted. Submission unlocks once every required role is accepted.
Legal Entity Representation: The Admin's confirmation that the Admin role represents the legal entity registering on MBN and is authorized to act on its behalf.
Onboarding Handoff: When the account creator assigns Admin to someone else, control of the application passes to that person to confirm representation and submit.

Licenses

Flat licenses, monthly or annual. No percentage of contract value, no per-deal fees. Prices include 7% tax.

Tendering License: The live license: create tenders, receive bids, and award under explicit authority. $57/month or $479/year.
Governance License: Execution governance after the award (workrooms, change orders, warranty), plus bring-any-contract parsing. $679/year. Arrives January 2027.
Pro: Tendering and Governance together in a single license, at a saving over buying both. $879/year. Arrives January 2027.

Execution governance (arrives January 2027)

Once tendering is grounded, MBN extends governance into the rest of the contract lifecycle. None of this is live yet.

Workroom: The governed execution environment that opens after a contract is awarded, tracking milestones, evidence submission, and acceptance events under audit-grade records.
Milestone: A defined execution step, submitted and formally accepted on the record inside a workroom.
Change Order: A formal scope, pricing, or timeline change agreed after execution begins, approved under explicit authority. Verbal agreements are not authorized.
Warranty Room: The controlled environment for warranty claims, opening only after formal commissioning acceptance, with deadlines tracked to a clear closure event.
External Contract Governance (ECG): Governance for contracts that originated outside MBN's tender lifecycle, brought into the same governed workroom structure. Part of the Governance License, with no per-contract fee.
Escrow: An optional settlement layer for controlled funding and release. Governance never depends on it; MBN enforces the governed record regardless of how parties settle payment.
Delegation & Financial Control: Organization-to-organization delegation with role-based permissions and financial thresholds that fail closed. Central to Management Company governance across a fleet.