The Lloyd’s Register Safety Accelerator was presented with the award for Excellence in Data and Technology Innovation at the prestigious Lloyd’s List Europe Awards last night, at London’s Park Lane Hilton Hotel. The innovative programme was awarded this high honour for its pioneering work, accelerating the adoption of digital technology for safety and risk globally.

James Baker, Lloyd’s List, Jan Przydatek, Director of Technologies, Lloyd’s Register Foundation, Catherine Chow, Public Relations Director, Group Marketing and Commercial Department, China Merchants Port Holdings (Award Sponsor) and host Hugh Dennis, British comedian.

The programme was chosen alongside other category winners from around the European region, and was adjudicated by a distinguished and industry-leading judging panel who felt that The Lloyd’s Register Safety Accelerator, the first programme of its kind globally, embodied everything that these awards were established to champion, displaying important and impressive global impact for safety and risk in critical industries, including the maritime sector.

Fellow nominees who led innovations in the marine industry and were also recognised for their contributions to data and technology innovation included BunkerTrace, Tototheo Maritime and Columbia Shipmanagement, V.Group and Wilhelmsen Ships Service.

The Safety Accelerator, a joint initiative of Lloyd’s Register and Lloyd’s Register Foundation run in partnership with Plug and Play Tech Center, catalyses digital innovations to solve tough, real-world safety and risk challenges, enabling corporate partners to trial new digital technology and ways of working, and encouraging the world’s brightest entrepreneurs to develop new safetytech solutions for safety-critical industries.

Since selecting its first cohort of startups in September 2018, the Safety Accelerator has set 19 safety and risk challenges spanning major infrastructure industries including the maritime sector, has received 500+ applications from startups around the world and currently sponsors ten live and launching safetytech pilots, including five projects between ship operators and startups, The programme brings valuable learnings and experience from industries such as Aerospace, Photonics, Military, Retail, Rail, Automotive and Security. Maritime companies who have engaged in open innovation through the Accelerator to improve safety include Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, Scorpio, Shell, Wallenius Wilhelmsen and PIL.

Accepting the Award on behalf of the programme, Jan Przydatek, Director of Technologies, Lloyd’s Register Foundation said, “We’re truly honoured to accept this award on behalf of the Safety Accelerator and would like to thank Lloyd’s List for recognising our programme and the important work that we do, making critical industries safer using digital technology. We’re looking forward to the outcome of the programme’s pilots and hope to be able to mitigate some of these risks and solve critical safety challenges for the benefit of entire industries.”

Maurizio Pilu, Vice President for Digital Innovation at Lloyd’s Register added, “Through the innovative Safety Accelerator programme we’ve proudly worked with leading marine corporates to identify and shape major safety challenges and connected them to a range innovative startups with technologies such as computer vision and emotion-sensing solutions to understand a range of unsafe behaviour on ships, ultra-low-cost sensors to predict fire on cargo ships and novel imaging sensors to detect gas leaks.”

Nial McCollam, Chief Technology Officer at Lloyd’s Register, said: “There is no underestimating the importance of safety in the maritime industry and it has always played a central role in everything we do as a classification society. Digitalisation gives maritime stakeholders opportunities to improve technology and systems to better protect crews and ships. LR’s Safety Accelerator programme has opened-up a platform for technology start-ups and leading maritime companies to work together and tackle prominent safety issues. I’m very proud that Lloyd’s List have awarded LR’s Safety Accelerator programme this award, which demonstrates our overall commitment to the industry, and I look forward to seeing future innovations from the programme.  We invite companies across the maritime industry to engage with us to ensure fast adoption and scale-up of solutions which are product of this innovative programme.”

“Plug and Play has tapped into its network of over 10,000 startups to find the best companies for this programme. We’ve enjoyed our work over the past year and half with Lloyd’s Register, Lloyd’s Register Foundation and their partners, to define the future of safetytech globally and look forward to upcoming projects in the new year,” said Michael Olmstead, CRO of Plug and Play.