It was some time ago that Bimco, perhaps because they were in receipt of so many complaints from their members about the treatment of their ships in terminals around the world, launched their own inquiry into what people thought about those who were servicing their ships in port terminals. Sensibly, because they know plenty about the paperwork burden inflicted upon those who go down to the sea in ships, they provided a brief simple questionnaire for people to complete, after they had shaken the dust of a port off their ships and were safely at sea.
The questions were not difficult to answer and basically amounted to a gauge of the ship-shore experience, focussing on the communications, the level of co-operation, the willingness of the terminal and its staff to provide for the ship’s needs and the satisfaction level of those aboard, and in the ship’s operational headquarters. If you were looking for a single word to sum up the exercise, it might be the “attitude” of the terminal to their visitor.
It seemed a very worthwhile thing to do, because there is no doubt that experiences vary tremendously. It is tempting to suggest that a ship is a “customer” and jolly well ought to be treated as such, but that is simplistic, because when a ship has been chartered by an interest which operates the terminal, it is the ship which is providing the service and the terminal which has the right to complain, if the vessel is deficient and fails to live up to its promises.
Nevertheless, in an ideal world there would be harmony and co-operation between ship and terminal, so it is clear that in many places there is room for improvement. You still hear scandalous tales about masters being pressurised to load wet cargoes prone to liquefaction, to alter cargo plans that will strain the structure, or the terminal loading at such a speed that the ship cannot de-ballast sufficiently fast. There are terminals which will not have reception facilities available, or which charge ridiculous prices for their use. Others are reputed to have a cavalier attitude to damage, bashing the ship around with grabs and other heavy equipment.
The Bimco questionnaire was designed to sort the good from the bad and ugly and perhaps to afford kudos to the former while encouraging the latter to improve. That will be in the future, but the first results have been published and it must be said that they provide a certain amount of encouragement that the situation is rather better than might have been expected. There appear to be fewer horror stories around than there were a few years ago.
This might be because ports and terminals are doing more to train their personnel, while it is arguable that at a time of gross ship overcapacity, it is the best ships and operators which pick up the repeat business. But hopefully a contributor might be that people can see the benefits of co-operation, rather than confrontation and that progress and high productivity invariably result from personnel on both ship and shore seeing the other’s point of view. The survey reveals that there are still places with scope for improvement, and now they have been told “how they are doing”, the poorer performers might just shape up. We can only hope.
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