Oceans of experience?

The 2010 BIMCO/ISF Manpower Update concluded that after five years of much better levels of recruitment, the supply/demand figures for seafarers – officers and ratings – were more or less balanced.

But Phil Parry, who sat on the Manpower Update committee, believes that the picture is far from rosy for the years to come; and any shortage of seafarers, and therefore decline in people coming ashore with seagoing experience, has a direct impact on the ports sector, especially as ship owners and managers, classification societies, legal firms, P&I clubs and others are competing for similar skills sets.

Mr Parry, chairman of Spinnaker Consulting, warns that the BIMCO/ISF report bases any optimism for the future on a continuing good level of recruitment, but: “The question is, can we keep it up?”. Also, recession or not, the world’s population is expanding ‘at an alarming rate’, the world’s fleet is growing, and import volumes into China are still very low per capita compared with Europe and the US, with obvious potential for much higher cargo demand.

All of that adds up to continuing growth in world trade, and therefore increasing demand for seafarers and port facilities and resources, and Mr Parry believes there could be a severe seafarer shortage by 2020.

“This is definitely important for the port sector as well,” he says. “And we are seeing a sort of two-tier response to the situation. As always, there are those who are ahead of the game and those who are just waking up to the fact that it is happening. Those ahead of the game, whether ports or mainstream shipping, have been looking at alternative sources of staff for the past five or six years. So as well as former seafarers, they are looking at what they consider relevant qualifications and degrees – engineers, naval architects, or similar techie qualifications that give the employer the sense that the person is going to ‘get it’. And they are putting them through appropriate training programmes now.

“Those who are only waking up to the problem are still recruiting from the competition – and starting to realise they have to start doing something about it themselves.”

On location

Where the port sector wins in the competition for maritime staff is in its geographical diversity, says Mr Parry. “It can offer the ‘local’ option, so if a seafarer does have a tie to a particular area, then there is going to be that extra draw to work in the ports sector, rather than relocate to London or another big maritime centre. That is the same for pilots, too.”

However, this is only part of the story and the need for former seafarers in some jobs is sometimes overstated, he believes. For example, in vessel traffic services, seagoing experience might have been a traditional expectation – but today, there are port authorities routinely training up VTS operators without any seafaring background.

“In the case of pilots, of course it is different; but in VTS, the job can be learned,” he says. “And I would argue that there are a lot of jobs that seafarers would have had in the past, which don’t necessarily require you to have gone to sea. When you really dig down deep, it is often just a question of ‘credibility’ in the eyes of the stakeholders surrounding that job.”

He suggests that employers need to take another look at job descriptions; some areas of expertise do require a high level of navigation or engine expertise but, he says, often some specific responsibilities within a job description could be delegated to another person, so that the role doesn’t necessarily require a seafaring background.

Mark Charman, chief executive of Faststream Recruitment Group, says that today only a fraction of people working in ports come from a seafaring background: “A lot come from a logistics background or shoreside liner shipping background, and move up through that and into ports,” he says. “For some roles, particularly some port management positions, harbour master, etc., then a master mariner is required but third party logistics and freight forwarding are more common backgrounds for the ports industry.”

He says there is still a significant skills shortage in the industry generally, compounded by people’s reluctance to change jobs. “There is available talent out there but it isn’t moving,” he says. “People are worried about making changes in the current climate; the economic uncertainty makes them worry. Also, people want to relocate but can’t sell their house. One client solved the problem by buying the candidate’s house – but that requires deep pockets and is very unusual.”

Bare minimum

Vivion Gough, lecturer in nautical science at the National Maritime College of Ireland in Cork, threw some controversial comments into the ring at a seminar on maritime training during the European Maritime Day conference in Gothenburg.

He suggested that some shipowners are satisfied with the ‘lowest level of qualification that ties his serf to him’, and are afraid of overtraining their seafarers and then losing them to a shore job.

“If you train to the minimum STCW 2010 standards [which came into force in January this year], then students will only have a qualification that is recognised onboard ship,” he says. “But we need to protect our industry and our students. We don’t deliver our students to the shipowner to keep – he can only have the loan of them. We also need officers to be able to come ashore.”

Mr Gough says some shipowners are not interested in supporting their employees in gaining further qualifications. “Why would they encourage their staff to be qualified to leave them?”

The NMCI offers officer cadets a three-year programme, at the end of which they are expected to leave with their STCW certificate of competency and also a degree in nautical science.

Until ten to 15 years ago, ports were always looking for master mariners, considered the highest qualification, to take up key roles, he says. “But nowadays, it is recognised that there is a need for some studying in logistics and they are looking for report-writing skills and the ability to think out of the box. So a degree is an almost necessary element to get jobs ashore.”

In the family

Both Mark Charman and Phil Parry disagree with Vivion Gough’s comments about shipowners discouraging their seafarers from gaining new academic qualifications.

“For many shipowners, the seafarers provide the talent that will come ashore and work in their offices,” says Mr Charman. “If they took that approach, they wouldn’t be rotating their officers ashore, as many do.”

Mr Parry says: “I would not credit most people with being forward thinking enough to be that cynical. Certainly if you talk to decent shipping companies, actually their view nowadays is that they can’t train their people enough and they are actually spending quite a lot of time and money training them.

The Port of San Diego, employing more than 550 people, puts HR issues very high on the agenda.

“Our business depends on people and our relationships with our stakeholders. Because our president/chief executive Wayne Darbeau comes from an HR background, he understands and supports our efforts with regards to recruitment, training and other HR initiatives,” says Michelle Corbin, human resources director at the port.

“We also recognise that with the aging of the population, the applicant pool for the types of specialised skills we need is diminishing. We have focused our efforts on the next generation, including our interns, to essentially ‘grow our own’.”

The port is working with California State University, Long Beach, to create a training programme that covers everything from basic terminal operations and the maritime industry to port-specific issues such as Homeland Security and labour relations. “Once it has been rolled out to the maritime staff, it will then be available to those employees in other departments who work closely with the maritime team,” says Ms Corbin.

In the UK, PD Ports recently introduced a dock operations apprenticeship scheme at Teesport. Historically the port’s apprenticeship schemes have focused on electrical and mechanical engineering trades, but the new scheme will provide apprentices with an NVQ Level 2 in dock operations. At the end of last year, the first group of 14 students finished a foundation degree in leadership and management (ports), launched by PD Ports and Teesside University in 2009.