Ship Management: Navigating Challenges, Strategies & Solutions

Challenges in Large Scale Ship Management

Several bottlenecks and pain points associated with large-scale ship management come in the way of better profitability and more efficient operations for shipping companies. Failure to comply with stringent regulations, difficulty in fuel consumption optimizations, delayed repair and maintenance plans, limited availability of real-time data, and lack of proper coordination between the crew are just some of the common shipping industry challenges. These lead to poor vessel performance, compromise safety standards, drive higher costs, and affect the overall downtime of the ships.

Here is a look at these maritime operational challenges in greater detail and what shipping companies can do to tackle them.

Regulatory Compliance and Environmental Standards

Ships must comply with various ever-evolving local, national, and international regulations. These regulations cover many aspects of maritime operations, including environmental concerns, safety standards at sea, and crew onboard living conditions. Ship managers must understand these guidelines clearly and ensure proper compliance with the maritime safety standards across the fleet under their supervision. 

Failure to comply can lead to the mandatory sailing certificates for the vessel getting canceled. That’s not all – severe compliance issues can also result in the ship being detained by the regulatory authorities or denied permission to access certain ports. Shipping companies may be slapped with hefty fines in such situations while facing considerable damage to their reputation.

Similarly, efficient ship management helps maintain environmental compliance. Periodic environmental audits help identify areas for improvement and ensure that operations remain compliant with international maritime regulations such as MARPOL guidelines. MARPOL or International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships is the leading international convention that deals with preventing marine pollution from maritime accidents or improper shipping operations.

During the audit inspections, various documents and records dealing with the shipping operations are reviewed. The inspectors may offer suggestions on areas for improvement, such as better waste management, ballast water treatment, and emission reduction best practices. Ship safety managers are responsible for establishing the protocols and collaborating with various stakeholders, such as port authorities, to ensure minimal environmental impact. 

As ship owners, ensure you have robust systems and processes for monitoring all activities on the vessel. This will prevent any unwanted regulatory lapses and keep your vessel’s performance compliant with industry standards, thus keeping penalties and other unwanted regulatory risks down to a minimum.

Crew Management and Welfare

Your shipping company needs to have employee-friendly policies to provide a safe place on the vessel for the crew to live in, thereby assuring their well-being. A ship can be an unusually hazardous place to work in. Ship managers must ensure that the crew is provided with appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) and these are also suitably replaced to prevent unwanted injuries and accidents to the seafarers when on duty. 

A good ship management team works to not only ensure safe working conditions for the crew but also a decent standard of living. Proper crew management can often prove challenging when out at sea for long periods. Respecting their rest hours, implementing duty rotation for the crew, providing proper accommodation, and providing access to medical facilities positively impact the crew’s mental health and keep them motivated throughout the voyage.

To ensure the well-being of the crew members, the ship manager also needs to help build an environment conducive to effective communication so that everyone on board can feel confident about making themselves heard. Shipping companies must remain invested in continuous training and development of the crew to make them more efficient in their duties, improve their knowledge, and enhance their skills.

Maintenance, Repairs, and Operations (MRO)

It is not easy to maintain a ship, with the process offering several unique challenges that make it difficult to implement efficient maintenance plans. Here is a look at some of the most common challenges.

Lack of sufficient time and manpower: Every large ship must have a minimum of 3-4 engineers on board at all times to maintain the various modern capabilities vessels today are equipped with. A shortage of manpower means the available personnel will have only very little time to dedicate, hampering their ability to run thorough inspections and maintenance.

Use of legacy systems: Legacy systems often lack accuracy in meter readings, which can be frustrating for maintenance engineers. Several vessels also maintain manual paper logs and extensive spreadsheets, making it tedious to analyze the data and gather the necessary details.

Inaccurate inventory records: When planning a maintenance job, required spare parts need to be accounted for. Not having proper inventory data can make conducting regular maintenance activities challenging.

The availability of various maritime technology solutions and advances in other technology areas, such as Artificial Intelligence and IoT, has resulted in refining shipping operations. Adopting the latest technology also enables more effective inventory management procurement plans and optimizes maintenance schedules for better risk management in maritime operations and streamlined performance. These also allow you to implement performance monitoring and tracking systems to keep tabs on the key performance indicators (KPIs), identify the improvement areas, and drive more efficient operations.

Cost Control and Financial Management

Financial stability in the shipping industry is governed by multiple factors including currency exchange rates, prevalent global freight rates, and fuel costs. An ever-evolving economic environment and geopolitical tensions increase these factors’ volatility.

Ship managers must be aware of global political and economic scenarios and have the necessary skills to anticipate shifts in market dynamics. This way they can take appropriate measures and adapt their decisions as required. Efficient ship routing and scheduling that follows an optimum route and avoids potential conflict areas ensures timely shipment delivery, thereby helping lower fuel expenses. With evolving technology, they must also keep themselves current on the latest technological trends to ensure regulatory compliance and optimum efficiency in operations. 

The nature of the maritime industry requires companies to be agile and have comprehensive finance management solutions in place to keep up with the demands. Enhanced efficiency, centralization, and simplified digital solutions provide strategic benefits to the accounting teams and help identify cost-reduction opportunities in shipping to boost the bottom line. Thus, the economic health of a shipping company is governed by the manager’s ability to navigate through the uncertain and dynamic maritime operating environment.

Safety and Risk Management

With increasing regulatory requirements to comply with, shipping companies today need to be quick and nimble when adapting their management practices to the changing environment. Those in charge of fleet management need to find ways in which to make the vessels compliant with the evolving industry standards. 

The ship manager needs to be aware of the new trending maritime innovations and how these can be best implemented on the vessels under their management. However, this increased dependence on technology also presents new risks that the crew was not required to deal with previously. A comprehensive assessment of these risks and identifying suitable mitigants is essential for helping the crew members know how best to react under every unforeseen circumstance.

Certain reports from international organizations such as GAO and ENISA suggest that the global maritime industry is a laggard in countering cybersecurity threats compared to most other sectors. Mariners face threats from various sources, including insiders, terrorists, criminal organizations, pirates, rival companies, as well as nation-states. The attacks from these sources could be motivated by anything from political agendas to financial incentives or be the result of a mere accidental breach due to poor cybersecurity practices.

Some of the potential shipping industry challenges arising out of cybersecurity attacks include:

• Attacks on third-party suppliers or OEM networks with a risk of them spreading to OT networks across the client’s vessels.
• Gaining access to IT/OT networks on the vessels by attacking the satellite providers.
• Exploiting cyber vulnerabilities to attack critical ship infrastructure such as ballast controls, propulsion mechanisms, and navigation systems.
• Compromised vessel systems due to threats of malware and ransomware.
• Compromised systems lead to physical harm to the ship, transporting cargo, and crew members.

Final Words

Effective ship management strategies are very important for managing large-scale ships and overcoming their unique challenges. By properly implementing such best practices, maritime companies can address the several bottlenecks and pain points in their operations while ensuring improved efficiency, better profitability, and proper compliance with international maritime regulations.

This is where ship management software such as Shipmate from SBN Tech can help ease your pain. By providing data-driven real-time insights for better decision-making, enhancing communication, optimizing maintenance plans, and streamlining operating procedures, we enable you to navigate the ship management challenges towards achieving operational excellence.