Rostima’s enterprise workforce management software allows ports to analyse the skills sets of individual workers and monitor and make best use of those skills, says Mr Bradshaw. 

“People are not necessarily sure how many people they would actually need to carry out the workloads, because these could vary on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. We help them to take a more pragmatic approach, enabling them to make business-critical decisions on whether they need to hire, so they have the ability to cater for present business or tender for future contracts.”

He describes the software as “an enabler” to help companies look at their own situations. “A manager trying to manage a very large port may not be aware of the actual operations that the individual is actually participating in, or the operational conditions.

“We take data fed from the TOS, then create a roster based around workforce times and contract constraints, to delegate the best person available for an individual task at a certain time.”

A less predictable side-benefit can be the elimination of “personality problems”. “Because the software is black and white, you begin to drive out some of the personalities – i.e. ‘I will only give overtime to my friend’,” says senior consultant Leon Youngman. “The system becomes much more transparent and everyone gets a fair and equitable amount of overtime.”