According to Columbia Shipmanagement (CSM) chief executive Mark O’Neil, digitalisation is a market differentiator that offers qualitative improvements for owners’ vessels.

“Digitalisation is a means of evolution that allows us to do interesting things for owners,” said CSM chief executive Mark O’Neil explained during a seminar at London International Shipping Week (LISW).

Mr O’Neil’s list includes optimising operations, predictive maintenance and fuel consumption monitoring, he said, but it also covers the type of improvements likely to attract and keep crew.

“We can reduce waiting time at ports – speeding up or slowing down vessels to prevent congestion,” said Mr O’Neil, noting that digitalisation, too, “is about crew optimisation by reducing transport costs.” This involves better managing seafarer’s time on board to reduce flight costs and optimising catering to match food in ship stores, he said.

Mr O’Neil also discussed how improved maintenance though digitalisation can provide benefits to owners and charterers.

All in all, he said “it is about maximising uptime and making owners’ ships more attractive”.

CSM assists its clients in optimising operations with its Performance Optimisation Control Room.

The optimisation includes route, speed, hull and propeller monitoring, energy management, trim optimisation, and preventative maintenance.

And Mr O’Neil said CSM’s analysts can also tackle commercial optimisation around claims, charter party compliance, port congestion, closures, demurrage assistance.

Digitalisation is the means for CSM’s ship optimisation, Mr O’Neill said, and using it for smarter shipmanagement provides owners with greater transparency of ship operations and better insight into vessel performance.

Ultimately, he said, shipowners and managers can cut operating expenditure by optimising crew services as well as operational and commercial performance.

The Performance Optimisation Control Room enables owners to optimise all aspects of operations including navigation, operational and commercial performance.

This includes:

• Route optimisation
• Speed optimisation
• Hull and propeller monitoring
• Energy management
• Trim optimisation
• Preventative maintenance.

Analysts in this optimisation control room can also provide commercial optimisation including

• Claims mitigation
• Charter party compliance
• Port congestion
• Closure warnings
• Demurrage assistance
• Competition monitoring
• Off-hire monitoring
• Round-trip voyage calculations.

Mr O’Neil is a Tanker Shipping & Trade Industry Leader and his company has won Tanker Shipping & Trade awards in the recent years.

In a separate announcement, Baltic Exchange has launched a new assessment to track ship operating expenditure. Initially this will cover a range of dry bulk vessels, then the service will be expanded to tankers and other sectors.

The Baltic Operating Expense Index (BOI) will be published quarterly and based on assessments from third-party ship management companies: Anglo-Eastern, Columbia Shipmanagement and Fleet Management. Collectively they manage a fleet of more than 1,800 vessels. Additional companies are expected to join the panel in the future and a residual price calculation added later this year.

Each panel member will submit four numbers, expressed in US dollars per day – crew fees, technical costs and insurance fees and rebates. These will be combined to produce the BOI.

Also included will be an assessment of a five-year drydocking cost, which will be amortised over five years to give a US$/day price, but published separately and will not contribute to BOI.

Assessments will be provided quarterly. Q4 2018 and Q1 and Q2 2019 assessments are available following a recent trial. Q3 2019 assessments will be published on 17 October. The assessments will be available on www.balticexchange.com to subscribers to Baltic Exchange market information services.

Source: rivieramm.com