Q88 Product Manager Tor-Arne Berger recently attended INTERTANKO’s European Panel in Glasgow, Scotland, as well as its Vetting Forum and North American Panel in Stamford, Connecticut. Read on to learn more about some of the key topics covered at these recent events.

Sustainability

Decarbonization is among the most important topics in the maritime industry today, particularly as the IMO is set to review the 2050 emissions objectives again in July. The INTERTANKO European Panel provided an opportunity for members to discuss sustainability from both an ecological and commercial perspective, focusing particularly on environmental protection and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping presented on challenges and opportunities in reaching emissions targets by 2050, and other presentations touched on potential roadblocks like renewable energy availability. By discussing and understanding these challenges with other industry leaders, the tanker space is better equipped to work together to overcome them.

SIRE 2.0

SIRE 2.0 was another key focus during the recent INTERTANKO meetings, particularly regarding changes to the vetting process that will come as a result. SIRE 2.0 is designed to evolve the inspection process to improve safety outcomes in the long run. This involves considering the human element more deeply, minimizing potential human error that could cause safety repercussions. The Panel also discussed report interpretation and implementation timeline to help align tanker professionals around the impending requirements.

Sanctions & Regulatory Considerations

The INTERTANKO North American Panel, chaired by Oscar Pinto of Valles Steamship, involved a great deal of discussion on new sanctions, tariffs, and other global considerations that may impact the tanker industry. Presentations covered the US Russian Crude Oil Cap, the Panama Canal Authority’s imposition of Disruption Tariffs, the MARPOL Annex II Tank Washing Zero Discharge Strategy, ESG reporting, and other security considerations. INTERTANKO is focused on remaining ahead of industry regulations to represent the best interests of its members—for example, it plans to contact the Panama Canal Authority to clarify the purpose of its recently imposed tariffs and inquire about an appeals process.

Q88 Developments

Finally, at the INTERTANKO Vetting Forum in Stamford, Tor-Arne had the opportunity to present on ongoing product developments at Q88, such as Officer Matrix changes in line with the new OCIMF requirements, Q88 questionnaire revisions, and more. His presentation also covered changes that are taking shape as a result of HVPQ 6, as well as Q88’s collaboration with the INTERTANKO vetting committee on questionnaire updates. The revised Q88 questionnaire is expected to launch in Q2 of this year, and Q88 will keep clients up to date on any product enhancements. The Q88 team looks forward to attending the next INTERTANKO events, such as the next North American Panel tentatively scheduled for September, so we can continue to keep up with the latest changes and advancements in the tanker space and evolve our solutions accordingly. If you’re interested in learning more about Q88 and how we can help you navigate change in the industry, contact us.  

The post Meeting Recap: INTERTANKO appeared first on Q88.

More commonly known as “cyber attacks”, the use of this ever-evolving form of malware is designed to compromise systems and/or steal data by encrypting files, rendering them and the systems that rely on them unusable. By the time you notice anything is wrong, your data has been taken hostage and a ransom has been demanded, hence the term ransomware.

Ransomware is not a new type of malware in fact it has been around for over 15 years.  It is only in the past 5 years that ransomware has started to become a mainstream industry, replacing the hacker’s favored use of infection via viruses, worms, trojan horses, key loggers or spyware. It has claimed the top spot for good reason; ransomware has monetized the use of malware.

Prior to 2015, most ransomware attacks were specifically targeted and developed by a single party. The first reported instance of Ransomware-As-A-Service (RAAS) appeared around 2015 and continues to change the security landscape to this day.

RAAS allows anyone to acquire ransomware software and use it to infect a targeted system with the agreement that a portion of the paid ransom be commissioned to the person providing the RAAS.  Hypothetically, this would enable a school child to download and install ransomware in his school or an employee now has the relatively easy opportunity to hold a corporate network hostage.

This means that RAAS is of significant concern to all companies, and this concern should not be limited to IT departments.

Ransomware used to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to restore infected systems. These days, it is not unheard of for ransoms to be in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. In 2020, a financial firm paid out a $40 million ransom.

Around the year 2017, there was much concern held about a malicious software called “WannaCry”.  This was for good reason as it was a ransomware package being spread throughout the Internet using the same techniques as a worm virus.  It was reported that the WannaCry ransomware attacks cost an average of $4 billion in losses.

Even outside of paying a ransom fee, the fallout costs from a malware attack can be huge. The infection of the world’s largest shipping firm, AP Moller – Maersk A/S by a piece of notorious malware known as Petya in 2017 cost them around $300 million in lost revenue, information technology restoration, and operational costs.

Ransomware is now firmly established as a big-money opportunity with off-the-shelf capability to attack targets without requiring any knowledge of information systems.  Reportedly, some RAAS offerings have become so structured that the service includes a negotiator to act on behalf of the attacker to work out the best terms.

Furthermore, there are reports that individuals are being recruited to carry out the infection into a corporate network.  Just imagine, you have a bad day at work and vent your frustration on social media; a day later you are offered US$5,000 to simply click on a URL while at work and install the software.  For a couple minutes effort and several thousand dollars in bitcoin later, your employer network is locked up and you get to go home early for the day.  This scenario may sound fanciful, but it is becoming a more frequent reality.

So, what’s the solution? A good defense strategy is to have a regular maintenance schedule for all your systems including anything that connects to the internet or network (wired or wirelessly), anti-virus/malware software installed on all information systems, and defensive appliances within your network to prevent and/or detect attacks.  Better defense against malware attacks comes via regular education throughout your organization and to promote an understanding of what threats exist, how they are employed and the responsibility to prevent them.

With billions of dollars being made, the authors and users of ransomware are being incentivized and becoming better equipped to improve the quality of their software and tactics.  Everyone is on the frontline and the hero can now be defined as the one who reports the suspicious message on LinkedIn and prevents a multi-million-dollar ransom situation.  Security is no longer a position nor department; it is a culture to be encouraged and rewarded.

For our customers, your data is safe in our hands. Our software products have the strictest security and compliance controls, as detailed below. You can find out more here.

• Encryption

All sensitive Q88 database information is encrypted. During transmission, Q88 uses the TLS encryption protocol, the same adopted for online banking. Electronic ‘certificates’ encode all communications using a 2048-bit RSA key and 256-bit encryption.

• Privacy and protection of customers’ hosted data

Hosting Q88 in London means that the European Union General Data Protection Regulation governs the data stored by our clients. In creating a robust standard for the protection of personal identifiable information, the GDPR creates a framework that strengthens business IT security.

Should the UK exit the EU, the UK’s regulatory controls will be equivalent or exceed the GDPR standard.

• EU data processed by US companies

The EU-US Privacy Shield decision was adopted on 12 July 2016 and the Privacy Shield framework became operational on 1 August 2016. The Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield applies to Switzerland.

These frameworks are designed to provide companies on both sides of the Atlantic with a mechanism to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States in support of transatlantic commerce.

These frameworks protect the fundamental rights of anyone in the EU and Switzerland whose personal data is transferred to the United States for commercial purposes. The framework also brings legal clarity for businesses relying on transatlantic data transfers.

• What about Rackspace and access to our data?

Rackspace has no knowledge of the data (including any personal data) that Q88 clients store or is otherwise processed on its infrastructure.

The post Holding the industry to ransom (ware) appeared first on Q88.

In my last article, “The Pool Was Born”, I wrote about the formation of the first tanker pool in the industry. In this article, I will talk about the dot-com bubble and the launch of Q88.com.

I’m sure most of you remember the dot-com bubble.  It was an exciting time, and the Internet’s potential seemed to be limitless. Back then, we had a Nokia or a Blackberry in our pockets and life couldn’t have been better. No one seemed to notice the insane amount of money being spent on Internet startups. Commercials during the Super Bowl were totally senseless, but it didn’t matter (or so people thought).

In the maritime industry, things were really heating up. New websites seemed to be launching every week. It was a novel frontier and everyone wanted to be part of the “gold rush”. I worked for my father back in those days. He ran a successful tanker pool company which I talked about in my last article. Numerous visitors came to the office to demonstrate their ideas that were going to revolutionize the industry. Most came with flashy presentations, not actual working, substantive websites to demonstrate. VC-backed silicon valley startups, wall street funded firms, and a plethora of industry veterans threw their hats into the ring with tech companies and each other alike. Ambitions were lofty and the maritime tech world was there for the taking. Companies like maritimedirect.com and levelseas.com were some that made the biggest splashes.

In February 2001, we had finished yet another meeting with a startup that was looking for investors and/or us to sign up for their service once it launched. I sat across the conference room table from my father after the pitch concluded.  We pondered.

He said: “I don’t get it. What are they trying to solve?”

I responded: “I don’t think they have really figured it out either.”

Him: “So what do you think we should do”?

Me: “I’m convinced this Internet thing is going to be big. But these ideas are not it. We need to start simple. We need to start small and launch something everyone will find useful.”

Him: “Ok, what do you propose”?

Me: “We should launch our questionnaire tool to the industry. Our operations team loves using it and so do our pool partners.”

And with that, the idea was born. We didn’t have a budget, no sales targets, no roadmap, just an idea and that was all we needed. I spent the first couple of months transferring our questionnaire tool from the internal website used by our pool partners to a new website, which would be available to the industry. We launched the website (see Figure 1) in June 2001 and offered the service free for six months. By January 2002, we had 100 companies signed up and paying for the service.

(Figure 1) Screen-shot of Q88.com from May 2002

At this time, a firm was tracking all the startups – they counted 300 that had launched into the maritime industry. Everyone was talking about it and everyone wanted to get involved. I think there are several reasons the bubble burst so let’s focus on the reasons related to the maritime industry:

• Internet technologies were not mature enough for mission-critical applications.
• Mobile solutions were very crude.
• People had barely started to use online consumer services like Amazon and banking websites.
• A majority of the companies were trying to change processes and disintermediate players.
• Most of the companies wanted to migrate the entire process to the Internet.
• Board rooms drove these ideas and investments, not people on the front line doing the business.

Ironically, we are in a similar space today with a large number of startups in the maritime space. StartupWharf has been tracking them, over 300 and counting. So what’s going on here and how is it different this time around?

• Internet technologies and mobile technologies are now mature.
• People are very comfortable using online services.
• Most startups understand they can’t build a solution to cover everything.
• Disintermediation isn’t a focus.

So will they succeed? Time will tell but I predict that most will fail. It’s different this time but the maritime industry is built around relationships and trust, neither of which are easy to build or earn. Many companies have found and maintained success since before the dot-com bubble. Even those may not be around for much longer. Companies focused on their customers, their employees and innovation will be the ones that will survive and thrive.

The post Growing Up and Working in the Shipping Industry: Part 3 appeared first on Q88.

Meet Josh Ervasti, Operations Manager at Stena Bulk in Houston, Texas. Josh has a degree from the United States Merchant Marine Academy, and prior to Stena Bulk he sailed as second mate, coming ashore a while after becoming chief mate.

Stena Bulk is one of the world’s leading tanker shipping companies, providing safe and cost-effective transport of crude oil and petroleum products at sea. They operate a fleet of about 100 vessels and have offices in six countries. Stena Bulk is part of the Stena Sphere, which has around 20,000 employees in Sweden and around the world.

Interviewer: Tor-Arne Berger, Q88 Product Manager
Topic: Q88.com

Tor-Arne: Hi Josh, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to participate in our series! How often would you say you are using Q88?

Josh: I use Q88 multiple times every day. Without a doubt, it is a very important tool in our everyday business.

Tor-Arne: What’s the key value of the system for you in your role at Stena Bulk?

Josh: The questionnaires, the documents, and the crew matrix, followed by the deadweight calculator and the vetting functionality are by far what I use the most frequently. The beauty of the system for us is time. Everything we do takes time and there is a finite supply, so if we can gather twelve documents at the push of a button, it is extremely valuable as a time saver.

Tor-Arne: Is the fact that the Q88 solutions are all cloud-based important to you?

Josh: Of course, anything that makes it more easily accessible wherever you are, including on my phone. We no longer have the luxury of saying ‘I’ll get back to you tomorrow’, so being able to share information without having to bust out the computer is a huge benefit. It’s all about saving time and ease of use, and your system checks both of those boxes.

Tor-Arne: Which other parts of the Q88 product family do you use on a regular basis?

Josh: The Q88 Voyage Management System (VMS) is where we live throughout the day, it is where we manage every financial aspect of our voyages. Milbros is the best cargo database out there that I have ever seen. We use it for SDS’s and Marpol safe carriage information, and this is very valuable to us. With the carriage of Annex II cargoes, you need a tool like Milbros. You were way ahead of the game showing the IBC code 2021 changes, so we had ample time to review and plan.

Another feature we use of the officer matrix compliance functionality, which is a very powerful tool.

Tor-Arne: How has the pandemic changed how you work?

Josh: The pandemic has touched pretty much every aspect of the business. COVID has been difficult to manage, especially with the severe impacts with respect to quarantines, even when going between ports in the same country. As an owner, we’ve been able to add clauses to charter parties to share some of the burdens.

From a technical management and crewing perspective, the pandemic has been extremely difficult, and the crew has been impacted the most.

Going back to your cloud question; while working from home, Q88 has been great and always available to us.

Tor-Arne: What, if anything, would be an additional feature that you’d like to see on Q88.com?

Josh: An integration with the class societies so certificates can be automatically updated when they are issued or renewed would be very cool and helpful.

Tor-Arne: Josh, thanks very much for your time!

The post Meet the User: Josh Ervasti appeared first on Q88.

Meet Nikolaos Kontos, director of operations at Concord Maritime in Stamford, Connecticut. Nikos is a graduate from SUNY Maritime College and a holder of a Chief Mate license for unlimited tonnage from USCG.

Interviewer: Tor-Arne Berger, Q88 Product Manager
Topic: Q88.com

Tor-Arne: Hi Nikos, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to me. How often would you say you are using Q88?

Nikos: I am using Q88 numerous times throughout my workday, referencing it for various things. We use all the key features of the system: questionnaires, certificates, inspections, officer matrix.

Tor-Arne: What’s the key value of the system for you in your role with Concord Maritime?

Nikos: I frequently search vessel particulars to verify if the vessel meets a certain restriction, like LOA, beam, air draft, etc. This allows me to quickly validate that we may proceed with the intended vessel. Before the vessel goes on subs, during the pre-fixture process, I look at data continuously. I obviously check the SIRE information, date of last inspection, and when heading to a discharge port, I check if it’s time for a new inspection and if the port is suitable for that.

Everyone has their own database or system on the technical side, but on commercial when everyone uses Q88, the single location for updated data and documentation is key. The system is very easy to use, in no time we can have everything uploaded and shared.

Using cargo history integrated with our VMS system also makes that part of the questionnaire near automatic. Anyone in chartering can look quickly on the last cargo history and grade, which can be crucial for fixing the next cargo. For example, they can easily see the last voyage – type of crude or fuel, and if any restrictions and/or requirements for the next cargo, we can then assess the expenses required for the next cargo, knowing what is necessary for the tank prep, whether cleaning, purging, etc.

Tor-Arne: Has the pandemic changed how you work?

Nikos: No, not at all, nothing truly changed on our end. Ships continued to be fixed under the same protocol. When we were working remotely, we had access to everything as our software toolset is all cloud based, making for a seamless transition to WFH. The only difference was the location and communication, using Zoom/ICE/WhatsApp in place of personal interaction with coworkers.

Tor-Arne: What, if anything, would be an additional feature that you’d like to see on Q88.com?

Nikos: The system is pretty complete from a commercial perspective. A way of sharing data and documentation via a link we can email instead of attachments would be a welcome improvement. A system notification, for example via email, when someone updates a certificate date without uploading a new certificate.

Tor-Arne: Nikos, thank you very much for your time!

The post Meet the User: Nikolaos Kontos appeared first on Q88.

I started my working life in Oil Trading at BP. I was in Tokyo working as Junior Trader/Operations where I excelled in operations, especially the commercial aspects; a key factor was getting a good rapport with the operations guys from the trading houses to swap out open spec contracts to optimize the CPP deals. Trading margins were so tight that clever operations were needed to tip the balance to profitability.

The trading part of the job on the other end, well that was never really my thing. Without a doubt, there were many reasons, not the least being that oil trading in Tokyo in the mid 1980s had no liquidity compared to say New York or even London. But my personality stands out to me the most. For example, if I ever got a good deal, I would feel sorry for the other guy. You can’t trade that way, just as you can’t play tennis or any of the other thousands of competitive roles that center around the idea of winning. But there is one thing you definitely can do with that attitude, and that is design! Designing something is for somebody else to use, and if you make the user happy, it’s a win for the designer too. Design is a vocation where your goal is to improve things for others. So, the very characteristic that undermined me as a Trader is the one that underpins me as a Designer.

Maybe as you look back over your life, you see pivotal events and “aha” moments, and perhaps they didn’t seem significant at the time, but now you can see how they shaped your path. Since joining Q88, my role has been predominantly as a Designer, but it wasn’t that way before. At Heidmar I was IT; at Bitor I was logistics; at BP I was demurrage, trading and operations. Last but not least, my degree was in Engineering and Management.

Working in demurrage in the late 80s, we had no “system” yet. Demurrage claims were primarily calculated by hand (though we did have Lotus 123), and we had no clear picture of overall progress. As PC software started making tracks, I thought there must be something that could do the calculation, generate the telex (yes!), and keep track of the status so we could report aggregated data. I found PC database software from Symantec called Q&A and used it to create an integrated demurrage system. It was so cool; we could report directly out of the same system where we ran the calculations. Looking back, I think the “All about me” principle may have already begun to take shape because, as demurrage analysts, we needed to calculate and send claims; reporting was a side effect.

From there, I moved to a small BP/PDVSA joint venture called Bitor, where I was 50% of the supply/logistics department. We had a very specific oil product to ship and a blank page to start with. I knew I needed to get a system in place before things got too busy. Unfortunately, Q&A didn’t have the power I needed so I looked at other database software like dBase IV, FoxPro and Paradox, but they were too complicated. I was not IT, and I was not a programmer but a business user who wanted a system. Then just in the nick of time, along came Microsoft Access! This was perfect as it allowed me to design and build a robust business system without any significant programming. Looking back, I can see that I was functioning as a Designer at this point!

Another significant factor at that time was really grasping the difference between accounting and business data. I had previously worked in BP’s Management Information Branch for a short time, so I had some knowledge, but this new role made it much more evident. My system was all about the movement of oil – quantity and quality. It had negligible financial data, but still, I found that management came to me looking for financial reporting. At first, I couldn’t quite grasp why that would come from my system instead of accounting. It wasn’t until after I sat down with the accountant and was shown how his data was structured compared to mine that it became obvious to me that real-time financial business data needs to come from the business systems. So I re-engineered my system to include the financials, which also came in handy to the business side as we expanded and increased the complexity of our logistics.

Fast forward to my time at Heidmar. At this point, it was becoming clear that after years in the business I was gravitating towards IT. There were some interesting detours into Systems Administration on my path towards design, including managing the network and Exchange Servers. I particularly enjoyed SQL Server, whether admin, SQL programming or BI, and in a parallel universe I would have ended up as a SQL developer, DBA or BI specialist! I also had some stints in designing and programming in C# and  Outlook/Exchange. This was a fantastic experience of reaching the whole IT spectrum, but I can still see the path towards Designer running through it all. After a few years, instead of programming myself, I mainly designed for other people to develop, which requires a whole new level of design discipline.

Looking even further back to my days at university, one of my favorite courses was Industrial Design. I also designed the advertising posters for one of the societies I belonged to. Quite possibly, the journey to design started this far back. All in all, you can certainly learn about design from courses and books, which I have dabbled in myself, but I believe there is nothing like the cauldron of life as a true teacher!

My life experiences have brought me to Q88, where I am now VP of Design. I will continue to blog about my design experiences and discoveries as a way to share insights and experiences that have not only shaped who I am as a person and designer but also how they come through in the products we design here at Q88.

The post My Journey to Design appeared first on Q88.

In my last article, My Early Years, I wrote about growing up in the shipping industry. Today, I will talk about the creation of the first and one of the most successful tanker pool in the industry.

It was 1998 and I had been working for my father for almost five years. We had already seen significant technological changes in the industry; cell phones were now mainstream; email was the main source of communication and the big telex printers in the back room of the office were long gone. We had recently announced the formation of a new tanker pool, the first one ever for all intents and purposes. At the time, Heidmar operated 10 panamaxes with a focus on the Caribbean market. Pleiades has the same number of vessels. The idea was simple: combine the two fleets under one commercial entity and benefit from scale to improve operational efficiencies. We compared the results of our respective fleets, and it was clear that Heidmar’s commercial team was outperforming Pleiades. So, the decision was made that Heidmar would run the Heidmar-Pleiades panamax pool.

For the pool concept to work, the earnings of all the vessels would be pooled and then distributed to each vessel based on a calculated formula that would assign points to each vessel. The pool participants, of course, wanted their own vessels ‘rated’ higher, so it took quite a bit of work to come up with a ‘pool point formula’ that was fair and equitable. The formula was calculated based on several parameters, including:

• Vessel’s LOA
• Number of oil company “approvals” (we’ll save this conversation for another time)
• Cargo quantity basis 40 ft FW (Panama Canal max draft)
• Ballast and Laden speed/consumption (updated semi-annually)
• Vessel’s age

With the formula agreed upon, the next question was, “how often should the pool report results?” We settled on bi-weekly. So, this meant that every two weeks we would print a copy of every voyage that had changed since the previous reporting period. In addition, we compiled a summary of the whole fleet showing each vessel’s results (contribution) and the expected earnings adjusted by pool points (distribution) that each vessel would receive. This package of papers would then be sent via courier to each pool partner for their review.

It seemed simple enough, but even a voyage performed 3 months ago could adjust the results as port costs and demurrage calculations were negotiated and adjusted. This resulted in a massive stack of printed material which had to be shipped every two weeks. It reminded me of the days of the telex printer and the 6-ply paper that had to be distributed around the office. There had to be a better way!

At this time, our voyage management system was a Microsoft Access 2.0 database that resided on our company server. I had an idea to develop a website that would display the voyage calculations online for the pool partners to have instant access to. This solved the courier problem and had another added benefit. One of the inherent issues with a pool is maintaining confidence that a pool manager is accurately and precisely reporting what the vessels are doing. The bi-weekly reporting package alleviated this to a certain extent, but it still allowed the pool manager time to potentially “adjust” the results. With the website up and running, the pool partners now had instant/real-time access to every vessel and voyage result. It made it nearly impossible to “adjust” anything, and the website thus became the biggest benefit to any potential shipowner joining the pool because instant reporting had never been accomplished before. And with this development, the pool began to rapidly grow in a way it hadn’t before.

At Q88, our focus has been to simplify operations to gain transparency and efficiency for the end user, as explained further in Richard Abrahams’s article, My Journey as a Systems Designer. More specifically, our voyage management software has been designed to adjust to the way the commercial manager operates, allowing the visibility to expose opportunities and then self-modify to enhance performance. We believe better data drives better business decisions, and with 20 years of experience in the maritime industry under our belt, our goal will be to continue innovating solutions that benefit our customers and the industry at large.

The post Growing Up and Working in the Shipping Industry: Part 2 appeared first on Q88.

Leadership is quick to latch on to the term innovation in hopes that teams will improve productivity and quality of output. This leads to terms such as “innovate or die”, “think outside the box”, “think different” etc. Unfortunately, catch phrases are shallow representations of the intention and run the risk of demoralizing the team rather than providing the inspiration for creativity. A leader is likely to end up over managing the team to make up for the suppressed creativity which is counter productive to the original goal.

There are many times where I have witnessed amazing innovations which led to improved performance, increased revenue, and a happier workplace. Reflecting on those projects, the innovation was more often a consequence of a situation rather than an intention of the project.  

I want my teams to perform at their best all the time; after all, the feeling of a successful project completion benefits everyone. Understanding that demanding innovation would not work and that relying on circumstance to create a need for innovation was not acceptable, I had to find a better way to manage.

At first, I felt that I had to be the one to drive the innovation because, surely if I led by example, others would follow. This required a lot of effort on my end, and I found that my team eventually became less interested in innovating. Next, I attempted to structure group meetings to encourage delegated research and thought generation. Initially, the team seemed enthusiastic about the process, but this interest waned quickly for much of the group; leaving myself and a couple other individuals who felt this was a good approach. The problem with both these approaches was that the pool of ideas and influence participating in the innovative sessions was too limited.

I abandoned both efforts and considered what it would take to have my entire team focus on improving our methodologies and quality of our collective work. I cleared the slate and reflected on why I personally wanted innovation. The first thought went something like “well if my team does better, it reflects upon me”. While true, it was not entirely accurate. I asked myself a myriad of questions that eventually led me to understanding that my passion for innovation is rooted in discovery and the excitement to share it with my peers. This brought me to an entirely different mindset. I needed to embrace a culture where ideas are encouraged, and the author of the idea would be held accountable to it.

The focus of my instruction now was placed on the outcome and less on the how it should be done. I began realizing that when I empowered each person to complete their tasks with minimal management, and without the pressure to innovate, things began to work better on their own. I witnessed team members collaborating to create breakthroughs and prevent issues; even the quieter team members started talking about a new way they found to perform a typical task.

To summarize, I found that when I was “doing”, I had a great team who followed the example. When I stopped “doing” and gave way to autonomy, accountability and, most of all, empowerment, the team had to innovate on their own. The need to innovate spread to every member of the team, instead of sitting on the shoulders of a few.

Only a few ideas lead to innovation, therefore one should seek out ways that will generate the most ideas possible and having an entire team empowered to contribute becomes the foundation for many ideas that support regular innovation.

Now I find myself supporting a culture focused on doing the best job possible and a team thriving within their own empowerment. At Q88, constant innovation is critical to our ongoing success – discovering a “better way” has enabled us to create a culture of innovation that will continue to thrive for years to come.

The post Q88 Innovation: Discovering a “Better Way” appeared first on Q88.

It was 1975 and I was five years old. I was living in Tokyo and I remember being awoken for a tour of the Tsukiji Fish Market; at the time it was the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world that received seafood from all over the Far East. We arrived at the market at 4 a.m. I was freezing to the bone and I couldn’t feel my toes. The market was dark and wet, the stench of raw fish completely overwhelmed me and I felt miserable. My father handed me a piece of chewing gum claiming it would warm me up, and much to my surprise within a few minutes I did feel warmer. So there I was, chomping on my gum, splashing around in my rain boots, and observing first-hand the world of shipping. It was that day, through observation, that I peered into the world of shipping and learned how it played such a vital role in transporting goods.

In 1986 I got a closer look at the industry when I started a summer job at my fathers’ company, Heidmar. I will never forget my first day, in that I was introduced to the all-important telex machine. It was big, it was loud, and it spat out a never-ending roll of 6-ply paper with faint printed text in all caps. I learned that this beast of a machine was the primary source of information from the outside world. That summer I spent my days splitting, collating and distributing the documents sourced from this machine to various departments, as well as carefully placing a hole-punched copy into the archive folder, which then was stored into a room designated for all telex messages. On a typical morning, I would have anywhere from 30-50 copies to distribute. This job was as boring and inefficient as it sounds. It was a completely manual process as e-mail was not a thing yet and we only had one computer in the office; it sat on a conference table in the middle of the floor surrounded by stacks of files and papers.

 Jumping ahead, I graduated college in 1993 with a degree in Aerospace engineering from CU Boulder. My subsequent entry into the US job market was poorly timed due to the sluggish recovery from the 1990 recession. The defense industry was impacted most severely by the economic climate and aerospace employment prospects or jobs closely related, proved bleak. Luckily, I had a knack for computers and IT, and my father’s company needed help. Up until this point, they had been using very simple spreadsheets to track voyages and log the ship’s noon reports by hand in a notebook. Microsoft Access launched around this time, and I learned it as fast as I could. I began programming what would become our fully centralized voyage management system.  It was able to do everything from voyage estimates and actuals to demurrage, invoicing, and reporting. The spreadsheets and countless notebooks were no longer necessary, and they soon became a thing of the past.

 At that time, however, we still had to make voyage folders to include every printed message passed from operations to demurrage to accounting as needed. The “voyage file”, as it was called, was constantly misplaced, and it was common to hear people yell out, “Who has Aldebaran voyage 12?”, or something similar. At the time, it was an efficient process, but when email was introduced a couple of years later, the advent of the cc:Mail system soon eliminated the clumsy telex printer with its 6-ply copies. And alas, a new era in digitization had begun.

 Be on the lookout for my next article, where I will talk about the birth of the first Panamax tanker pool.

The post Growing Up and Working in the Shipping Industry: Part 1 appeared first on Q88.

Over the years, I have adapted a design principle that I like to call “It’s All About Me”. As a designer, I am incredibly passionate about creating user-centric systems that connect business operations seamlessly and guarantee that data stays within the system. And of course, when I say “me” I mean the end-user; the individual people and companies at large. I strongly believe that a successful design begins and ends with how well the user can interact with it. 

I am constantly looking outward for inspiration. Experiencing systems in the real world influences me to push boundaries to design better systems that will meet the demands of those in this industry. In this blog post, I will share two rather interesting personal experiences that have influenced the way I approach this design principle.

My first experience centers around when my wife was working in Manhattan. She worked on Broadway, and I remember driving my Mini JCW (215 HP in a go-cart!) with the top down blasting Stairway to Heaven, heading up 6th Avenue to pick her up; the artist in me was thinking “life doesn’t get better than this!” I digress, but my wife is a Psychotherapist and very good at it, and the way she operated influenced me to be mindful of an important aspect of collaborative business systems. The office had a collaborative system that allowed therapists to enter client session notes. Billing, health insurance and scheduling information also had to be added, information that was required by the “back office” for the rest of the team to access. The problem she faced was in the complexities of entering the data other people needed, which even made it very frustrating to enter the private session notes, which increased the risk of session notes going missing. Extending this challenge to a shipping company chartering, operations and post fixture teams, I realized that a good collaborative system needs to do more than gathering data to be shared across the organization, it needs to make it easy for each individual to do their own job. In other words “It’s all about me”.

My second experience centers around the time I was at Heidmar. Observing Jim, one of our Suezmax Traders at work, I became more mindful of the need to ensure users remain in the system.  Please allow me to pause to say that, while it may not have been perfect, I had been assured by peers outside of the company that our system was definitely very solid. In this particular instance, Jim was using a system that required the user to properly categorize a fixture the moment it was fixed to ensure the “back office” had the ability to follow up as needed correctly. With a task of organizing a large Suezmax fleet with numerous cargoes, it is pretty common to fix 4 or 5 cargoes on similar dates to be allocated to different vessels – all dependent on the timing of their previous voyages. Therefore, Jim had to input the categorization of each fixture, even if it would have to be redone should the vessels get shuffled around – a huge hassle and frustration. He actually found it easier to keep fixtures in a separate notebook and only enter them into the system once they were 100% confirmed. When I observed this, I instantly realized that this was a broken system – an “all about me” system would eliminate these frustrations.

The next time you visit a website, ask yourself, is this company operating under a “for other people” (the company) mindset, or an “It’s All About Me” (me, the user) mindset. A company-centric approach will constantly ask you for information that may not necessarily be relevant to the task at hand, as a way to collect as much information about you as possible to benefit their marketing efforts and business needs over yours. In comparison, a user-centric approach will most likely leave you feeling that you had a great experience and one that you would want to repeat. 

At Q88, and as Systems Designer, I aim to do just that. Make our systems easy and pleasing so our users have one less thing to worry about. Be on the lookout for my next blog.

The post My Journey as a Systems Designer appeared first on Q88.