Vessel Inspection App gets sector seal of approval

Left to Right:  ICHCA’s Richard Steele, Keynote speaker Morten Engelstoft, APM Terminals’ Nissa Ibrahim and TT Club’s Peregrine Storrs-Fox at the TT Club Innovation in Safety Awards.

APM Terminals’ Vessel Inspection App has been relaunched this month with new features to further support safe working environments for stevedores and other terminal staff.

The app, which is available in six languages: Arabic, English, French, Georgian, Portuguese and Spanish, takes inspectors through a standardised eight-step procedure, ensuring consistent, comparable and tracked results.

Eight-steps to Safer

Inspectors are guided to ensure the gangway is safe before they board a vessel, to inspect all relevant work areas and address concerns before operations start. By digitizing the inspection process, key concerns are reported consistently across vessels, and across terminals.

With the App, Pre-existing or historic issues are flagged and visible, and a scoring system from one to four (rather than the previous yes/no response) facilitates the rating of criticality. Further upgrades include training materials and visuals guides to improve ease of use, and escalation steps in the event of safety critical or recurring issues. Standardized processes for managing critical risks have, as a result, been further enhanced.

So far, 23,000 inspections have been carried out globally using the App which has been credited with elevating safety Standards across shipping lines. The relaunched App has already received positive feedback from inspectors from our six pilot terminals.

No shortcomings

The App has attracted the attention of our joint venture and non-controlled APM Terminals partners. Additionally, it received the recent accolade of being placed first in the industry-leading TT Innovation in Safety Awards on February 23.

Said Jack Craig, Chief Operations Officer at APM Terminals: “We are delighted with this recognition for the safety app we have developed in-house in collaboration with Maersk. The app provides a standardised digital platform for terminals to carry out vessel inspections, highlighting potential critical risk. It underpins our continuous focus on safety throughout our operations and is a great example of how we can smartly deploy technology to be even better at this.”

His words were echoed by Arun Kalam, Sr. Global HSE Business Partner, and member of the team responsible for the upgrade. “Safety is the leading driver in this Application – and safety extends beyond competitor boundaries,” he said.

“We want to make sure that the environment in which stevedores work is safe, and that all colleagues return home safely every day.”

Our colleagues (centre) HSSE supervisor Hamza Maghfour and deckman Taoufiq Lahlimi (right) at APM Terminals Tangier, using the app during a vessel inspection with the vessel chief officer.