Some more meat on the bones of what adopting ECDIS fleetwide might save a forward-looking shipping company came in the afternoon session of day 2.
Stolt-Nielsen’s Petter Brandt estimated the indirect cost saving of 1,000 to 1,500 hours of work on chart corrections per ship – and with a newbuilding programme of 20 ships, that’s a lot of corrections saved.
Brandt himself proved a math geek, going on to note the pressure on ECDIS training that his company would be under. “we will have about 700 officers in all who need training. Assuming seven people on a course of five days, 350 in both of our training sites then theoretically that’s 50 weeks. In fact it will take us two years.”
But he said the fact that he wouldn’t have to change out paper charts on these ships every five years at a cost of $35,000, “gives us the money for quite a few ECDIS systems.” Sailing paperless he estimated would mean yearly cost reductions of around 25% compared to running paper ships, money which went straight to the bottom line.
Brandt is the softly-spoken type and it was left to a delegate to remark that the speakers should be talking about making money rather than just saving it. “Yes,” said Brandt, “but only if you get your training right.”
