What price experience?
After several thousand years of training seafarers, one would think that mankind had some sort of a system in mind. Surprisingly, there is no formal training-at-sea system. Continue readingHoles in the fence
When the Cosco Busan struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on November 27, 2007, in a heavy fog, it became an exhibit in the ongoing debate about the importance of crew qualifications. Continue readingYou need to know the numbers
Like it or not, seafaring skill is a global commodity, and it is important to know what is what, and who is where. Seafarers are not the flexible friends they were in the past, but becoming as specialised as their ships are, and the provision of their skills are as important as the ships themselves. Continue readingInvestment for the future
It is difficult to prescribe (or even advise) how others ought to arrange their commercial affairs during a shipping recession, especially one that could be of longer duration than the overlying trade downturn. Every enterprise is different, and the strategies employed to cut ones’ coat according to the available cloth are many and varied.But there should surely be very great caution exercised before permitting the cost cutters to do their work on the training budget. To hack back on cadet training, or ruthlessly refuse to employ young people you have spent several years training is akin to desperate agriculturalists eating the seedcorn, and condemning themselves to starvation in the future.
The shipping industry has barely recovered its reputation from the last deep and long recession, much of which was self-inflicted, but… Continue reading
« go back