Damien Chevallier

Director of the Maritime Safety Division at International Maritime Organization

Speaker

Damien Chevallier has international technical and legal expertise which he acquired through the various positions he has held throughout his career. He was first trained as a Technician and then as a military naval construction engineer. He spent the first part of his career (1994-2005) in the military naval industry and occupied several positions in shipyards, engineering offices, research centers and program directorate of the French Ministry of Defense. He was working at the time on surface ship and submarine design projects both for the domestic and export markets. In 2005, he joined the Maritime Safety Division of the French Directorate for Maritime Affairs. HewasappointedRapporteurfortheCentralSafetyCommission.ThereafterheservedasDeputyHead of the Regulation Unit and then became Head of the Regulation and Ship Safety and Security Unit. Since 2006 he has been part of the French delegation for the IMO’sBLGSub-committee,thenPPRSub committee and MEPC and MSC Committees. In particular, he has followed IMO’s work on the BWM Convention implementation, the revision of MARPOL Annex VI, the Hong Kong Convention, and greenhouse gases emissions reduction. In 2016, he became Deputy Director of the French Maritime Safety Division and after joined the Permanent Representation of France to the IMO in September 2018 as Deputy Permanent Representative and Maritime Attaché to the French Embassy in the United Kingdom. In September 2023, he joined the IMO Secretariat as Chief of Staff of the Executive Office of the Secretary General. Since end of November 2025, he has been Director of the Maritime Safety Division of the IMO