Posted: November 15, 2012
We’ll be tuning into Ireland’s Search and Rescue on RTE 1 this Sunday at 6.30pm to see a few familiar faces.
Following on from the success of the two Irish Coast Guard helicopter rescue series, Rescue 115 and Rescue 117, Ireland’s Search and Rescue is a six part series, presented by Claire Byrne. This new series features the Irish Coast Guard helicopter bases in Dublin, Waterford, Shannon and Sligo as well as RNLI stations and Mountain Rescue teams nationwide. The series also shows the work of Cork City Fire Brigade and volunteer Coast Guard groups.
(Image property of RTE)
See http://www.rte.ie/tv/programmes/searchandrescue.html for further information.
We wish all involved the best of luck with the new series.
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Posted: February 27, 2012
In the latest edition of Dry Cargo International magazine, GAC’s ship agency operations are discussed as well as GTSS, the NMCI and the partnership with Brobulk. Read the full article below:
Ships’ agents prove their worth
GAC is a global provider of shipping, logistics and marine simulation training. As one of the world’s largest ship agencies, it has developed its business on a reputation for professionalism and quality service. As ships’ agent, GAC represents more than 3,500 customers and handles close to 60,000 vessels annually through a worldwide network of over 300 offices and a presence in over 40 countries. It is due to the breadth of services that it can offer worldwide that the GAC Group has the financial strength, experience and economies of scale to offer a one-stop solution to customers across the globe. In this article, GAC’s group sales director of shipping, Neil Godfrey, gives his insights into the company’s role in the ships’ agents market, and a view of the shipping industry in general.
As a ships’ agent, GAC offers an extensive portfolio of services related to both ship and cargo, which can be tailored to
meet each customer’s needs. These include: read more…
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Posted: December 15, 2011
The final article for the Port Strategy was released recently. Read the full article below:
“Yes, you can do a Marine Risk Assessment, even quite a sophisticated one, which doesn’t go into sufficient detail or misses the point entirely says Captain Stephen Gyi of GAC Training and Service Solutions.
Unfortunately, this ‘missing the point’ can be less an oversight and more of a “commercially driven decision”, he adds.
Outlining a basic process, he explains that a group of experts identify the probable marine related hazards (HAZID) and resulting environmentally related hazards (ENVID), including emergencies such as vessels losing power, colliding or running aground. Obviously, “those risks with potential to endanger life or damage the environment are particularly important to capture”.
The levels of consequence and the likelihood of occurrence are filled out, often on a five-by-five risk matrix. From this the team returns to the beginning and assesses each hazard in turn, which provides a value of either high, medium or low risk, depending on the chosen values for that location, type of cargo and vessel involved, and the scenarios are re-run with projected mitigation measures in place. While there are almost always measures that can be adopted, they usually come with a cost attached, so the idea is get all associated risks down to what industry recognises as ‘as low as reasonably practical’ or ALARP. read more…
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Posted: October 18, 2011
“Training too often seen as a ‘soft’ cost.’ The lastest article from Jeffrey Blum highlights the importance of training. Offshore training in particular is something we focus on here at the NMCI.
“The struggling dry bulk sector suffers from a basic lack of professional expertise that can generate serious problems. The cause and solution are straightforward, argues Jeffrey Blum.
Perhaps the most striking difference between the dry bulk sector today and a decade ago is the increasing dominance of the market by large companies.
In itself, this is not a problem but the industry has been navigating tough times for a number of years and, as a result, training is often high on the list of immediate cost cutting opportunities. This is short sighted.
The size of a company does not necessarily dictate a level of professionalism, expertise or commitment to quality training within it. Because of their size and scale, too many believe they can rely upon internal expertise to train others – an approach that is more often than not ineffective.To avoid the mistakes of one generation being passed down to the next, these organisations need more thorough and standardised training than current internal processes provide. The sector is already struggling with self professed experts disseminating their ‘knowledge’ and, by doing so, simply extending their own operational ineffeciencies.
The proof of these problems lands on arbitrators’ desks every day. Of the disputes I come across, too many stem from a basic lack of knowledge and understanding.
Commonly these disputes are about demurrage calculations, but the subject of the dispute is secondary to its underlying cause: a lack of training in how to carry out these processes appropriately. read more…
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Posted: August 23, 2011
For the first time, shipmanagers can order all of Seagull’s training modules as online computer based training (CBT) courses saving time and money for crew tuition. CBT enables seafarers to undertake training either on board ships or in their homes during shore leave instead of travelling to management offices or academies, says Seagull managing director Roger Ringstad.
“All our CBT can be run online for the first time” he explains. “We started in 2005 to convert our CBTs and we finished this in February 2011. Now 100 per cent of our modules can be run online.” Seagull provides online CBT to Unicom in Cyprus and Teekay Corp. Mr Ringstad expects others to follow: “We will have 10 more customers by the end of this year using online CBT on board their ships, and for office staff like superintendents and technicians.
“We have been running trials with various owners, running OBT online from their ships. We run e-learning content locally from onboard workstations.”
Bandwidth limitations means Seagull still needs to burn CBT courses to CDs and send them to ships. “If all of our customers went online, then we could do this very swiftly” he adds. “But we still have problems with sending just 100kb files to some ship operators.
Seagull has recently developed a CBT module for teaching tanker operators about volatile organic compounds (VOC) emissions reduction technology. This technology is already employed on North Sea shuttle tankers.
“We developed a course for tanker operators to explain the regulations and show how to operate VOC equipment. There are some different technology solutions. Teekay has one solution and Knutsen has a different technology. Shuttle tankers collect VOCs in the North Sea in accordance with Norwegian regulations. We expect this will go international as in the future Marpol Annex VI will introduce similar requirements.”
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