Intermanager News

Shipmanagement trade group InterManager is urging the shipping industry to increase its focus on safety amid a recent surge in deaths in enclosed spaces on ships.Three seafarers and five shore workers died over the past week in accidents in enclosed spaces, bringing this year’s known deaths to a total of 31, according to InterManager.The trade association keeps records of these incidents on behalf of the wider shipping community, sharing them with regulators in its role as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) member of the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

If you think the human element is the only cause of enclosed space deaths, think again.Enclosed space incidents are cited as the largest cause of on-duty fatalities in commercial shipping. The risks can’t simply be engineered out, but there’s a powerful coalition wanting action nonetheless.There’s a tendency to blame failure to follow procedures, they say. Investigations seldom focus on the practicality of those procedures or the influence of the operating environment and vessel design, they say.

It's nearly 45 years since the tragedy on the ANCO Duke where seven crew died at the bottom of the tank they were cleaning. “I was working on chemical tankers then. All the crew felt this terrible loss of life and took on tank entries with a heightened safety focus,” says Captain Dave Watkins, Deputy Director of the confidential near-miss reporting service CHIRP Maritime. Since then, enclosed space deaths still occur, although not in the number they did.Watkins has years of experience on chemical and VLCC tankers as an officer and master…

Ship management association InterManager is urging the European Commission to follow the polluter pays approach when finalising legislation intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping in European waters.Shipowners are concerned that proposed EU-ETS legislation could miss its mark if it holds ship management firms accountable for emissions reductions rather than target the parties who control key pollution-related aspects of ship operation such as fuel, machinery and vessel speed.In a submission to the Commission…

Equipment issues are behind nearly a quarter of all lifeboat accidents, according to  new safety report from classification society Lloyd’s Register (LR) and ship management trade association InterManager.Concerned about lifeboat safety and fatalities caused by lifeboat accidents, InterManager began gathering statistics several years ago, aiming to identify key risk factors. Having collated figures which date back to 1980, InterManager now has the largest maritime industry database of lifeboat accidents.LR’s SafetyScanner…

Frustrated by the lack of progress and slow pace of international efforts, ship management trade group InterManager said it will work separately to obtain COVID-19 vaccines to protect the world’s more than 1.5 million seafarers and thereby keep international trade routes open.InterManager president, Mark O’Neil, said, “Global organizations have talked their way round in circles and still we are no further forward in providing a vaccination program for seafarers who are vital in ensuring that world trade and aid continues to be delivered.

The need for ships to change crews and for the world's 1.2 million seafarers to be able to fly home at the end of their periods of service have emerged as two of the biggest challenges facing the shipping industry as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.To help governments put in place coordinated procedures to facilitate the safe movement of seafarers, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) issued a 12-step plan to 174 member states, providing them with a roadmap to free…

The Crew Connectivity 2018 Survey Report, sponsored by KVH Industries and Intelsat, shows digital transformation underway in the maritime industry. Roger Adamson, Futurenautics Maritime’s chief executive officer, presented to a London audience yesterday the key findings from his research organization’s newly released Crew Connectivity 2018 Survey Report, sponsored by KVH Industries, Inc. and Intelsat S.A. The report is based on a survey of 6,000 serving seafarers, the largest sample to date to complete the wide-ranging questionnaire covering onboard attitudes to the digital transformation sweeping the industry. According to the report…

InterManager, the trade association for in-house and third party ship managers, together with The Warsash Maritime Academy, has presented the findings of its fatigue study, Project MARTHA, to The International Maritime Organization (IMO). Speaking at the presentation last night, Capt Kuba Szymanski, Secretary-General of InterManager urged the maritime industry to take notice of the findings as the industry recruits aspiring seafarers. The report highlights growing levels of fatigue, particularly among Masters and Watch Keepers, and noted that motivation was a major factor in fatigue experienced by seafarers. A Master’s place on a ship is central to its performance, a claim which many would agree with. The performance of seafarers onboard is paramount to a vessel’s operation and efficiency.

Braemar (incorporating The Salvage Association) (Braemar SA) has called for more training to be given in order to make vessel casualties manageable in the event of high-risk incidents. Addressing delegates at the annual International Shipowning and Shipmanagement Summit in Singapore today (3rd October), Graeme Temple, Far East Regional Director for Braemar SA said: “Training is essential to managing incidents effectively and looking at how processes can be improved. Often we see casualties needlessly occurring because of human error, this can be managed, if not avoided, by providing the appropriate training before such events occur. “Most large casualties are a once in a lifetime event, but we must make sure Masters are prepared for every eventuality.

The cloud is for “device-agnostic young slashers,” said Trond Bjorseth, marketing manager, of Oslo-based cloud consultancy, Tieto. His company offers an information management tool for subsea projects and “repositories” for the shipping sector’s operations. With Tieto you can get “one big happy project room,” although he admits at least three suppliers offer something similar. For its own future “slashers,” Glasgow-based ship manager Norbulk Shipping opted instead for Google Cloud Technology Solutions…

The winners of ISWAN's International Seafarers' Welfare Awards 2016 were announced on 24th June at a high-profile ceremony held in Manila, the Philippines. The ceremony forms part of ISWAN's celebrations in the Philippines for the IMO Day of the Seafarer. The awards were presented by IMO Secretary General Mr Kitack Lim to seven recipients who have provided exceptional services for the welfare and wellbeing of seafarers. The Welfare Personality of the Year Award is named after Dr Dierk Lindemann who sadly passed away on 17 March 2014. Dr Lindemann served as the Shipowner's Group spokesperson at the ILO and took a lead role in the adoption of the Maritime Labour Convention. Shipping Company of the Year: Masamichi Morooka - Chairman of ICS.

InterManager, the international trade association for in-house and third party ship management, is giving its full support to this week’s Seafarers Awareness Week (20-26 June), co-ordinated by Seafarers UK. “Maritime Jobs for Future Generations” is the theme, aiming to raise awareness of the many career possibilities the maritime world offers young people. The shipping industry employs 1.5 million seafarers worldwide and Seafarers Awareness Week highlights the vital role seafarers play in the global economy. This year’s theme also complements the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) “Day of the Seafarer” (25 June) and World Maritime Day (29 September), which both focuses seafaring as a career and celebrates the role seafarers play globally. Capt.

International trade association for in-house and third party ship managers InterManager has extended its membership from within the Middle Eastern shipping market, welcoming Overseas Marine Logistics (OML) as a full member. United Arab Emirates-based OML provides ship management services and operations to worldwide clients, specializing in offshore project management, commercial and technical management and vessel chartering. InterManager President Gerardo Borromeo said, “I am pleased to report that InterManager is receiving more applications for membership from around the globe. InterManager represents the interests of the ship management sector on the global maritime stage, particularly at meetings of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and other key industry bodies.

Senior decision makers from all sectors of the shipping industry met in Hamburg yesterday to hear some of the leaders in the digital revolution debate the opportunities and threats faced by the industry today. Although operating in many different fields, their conclusion was startlingly clear. To navigate successfully and profitably in the digital age, ship operators must go back to basics, steering a clear course through the data explosion to harness the benefits of the new technologies whilst avoiding their pitfalls.

Ship management company Norbulk Shipping is already seeing the benefits from embracing the move toward paperless ships. The Glasgow-based ship manager explored several options before deciding to move its IT systems to ‘the cloud,’ via the cloud migrator for Google, Cloud Technology Solutions. A need for the industry to move to the digital world has been recognized by InterManager, the international trade association for in-house and third party ship managers, which believes the burden of administrative tasks falling on seafarers in today’s shipping industry is significant. The paperless ship is a big issue facing the shipping industry with many companies trying to reduce time and paper used in form-filling, both onboard and ashore.

The global shipping industry, represented by a cross section of international shipowners' associations and seafarers' unions, has collectively updated the industry's Guidelines on Large Scale Rescue Operations at Sea. This is in response to the continuing crisis in the Mediterranean, in which merchant ships and their civilian crews have so far assisted in the rescue of over 50,000 people. But the Guidelines are also applicable to other regions where ships may have to assist with rescue operations involving large numbers migrants or refugees, including South East Asia.

Philippe Louis-Dreyfus will be BIMCO's new president for the next two years. Elected for two years, Philippe Louis-Dreyfus, also former President of Armateurs de France, has outlined its mandate, from his speech at the Annual General Meeting of BIMCO: promoting fair trade practices, place ship in the heart of the work of the organization and reinforce the BIMCO leadership in various areas of the maritime sector, such as security, pollution and the environment. The new president sees Bimco's development of standard contracts and clauses as fundamental to Bimco's reputation, and highlighted the development of a standard ship finance term sheet as a strong example of Bimco supporting shipping businesses.

BIMCO has today announced that it has taken ownership of the unique Shipping KPI System that allows shipowners and managers to compare their ships’ efficiency against the performance of the industry and sector averages. The Shipping KPI System is unique because it is based on a standard of 64 different performance indicators (such as ship unavailability and number of environmental related deficiencies) to allow the most specific and accurate comparison of ships – within each sector and more broadly across the industry – that is currently available. The data collected is anonymised, so it does not compromise commercially sensitive information. ·         technical performance.

On the eve of its Annual General Meeting in Manhattan, Alexandra Anagnostis Irons, founder and president of Total Marine Solutions and current president of WISTA USA, discusses the role of Women's International Shipping & Trading Association (WISTA) in the modern maritime community. As President of the Board of WISTA USA, you are the face of the world’s largest woman’s maritime networking group. What are your goals for the organization under your tenure and what is the vision for the future when it comes to WISTA itself?

Technology is central, not merely an add-on, to ship manager brand value. Ship managers who operate vessels on behalf of their owner clients, are the lynchpin of international shipping. As the industry has gone through rounds of relentless cost cutting, at times of increasing regulatory scrutiny, and commercial pressures for high standards, third party managers have filled the need for raising quality, while maintaining tight cost controls. The rise of third party managers in the 1980s and 1990s…

Rajaish Bajpaee, Chief Executive Officer of Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, will receive the Tanker Shipping & Trade Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of a career spanning more than 40 years and characterized by outstanding commercial acumen, wider industry participation and philanthropy. As head of Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, Bajpaee has overall responsibility for a fleet of more than 600 ships of various types, 20,000 employees and maritime service, crew management and training centers in over 30 locations around the world.

Maritime operational effectiveness is to be enhanced globally through the provision of training and certification for seafarers assigned to use advanced satellite communication systems on-board commercial vessels. The initiative, which has been tailored for maritime professionals serving on thousands of commercial vessels at sea, is being led by Seagull Maritime, a Norwegian provider of seafarer training, and GVF, the London-based international association of the satellite communications industry. “Ship owners and managers depend daily upon broadband satellite communications for mission-critical applications”, said Roger Ringstad, Master Mariner and Managing Director of Seagull Maritime.