Intermanager says it has won widespread support for its proposed raft of around 30 key performance indicators designed to be applicable across the board for all sectors of shipping, following a meeting in London last week attended by many other trade associations.
Among those at Thursday’s gathering were BIMCO, Intertanko, Intercargo, the International Chamber of Shipping, the International Shipping Federation, the Oil Companies’ International Marine Forum, the International Maritime Organization and the European Commission.
Guy Morel, general secretary of Intermanager, which represents third-party and in-house shipmanagers, said that the KPIs have cost around $8m to develop, albeit with much of the funding provided by research foundations rather than Intermanager itself.
“The goal is to create a set of key performance indicators for shipping that will become standard for the industry. What we have done for the last few years is work on a set of KPIs that well represent the shipping industry, covering all aspects of performance in shipping operations,” he told Lloyd’s List.
Intermanager had taken up the task, which some might see as more appropriately the work of other organisations, “simply because someone has to do it”, Mr Morel said. The proposals have now been presented to other stakeholders and met with widespread approbation, despite fears that each individual sector might consider its specific interests better served by going it alone. Intermanager stressed that its KPIs have expressly been designed to be broad, which brought a number of advantages.
“If you have your own KPI, you can measure your own performance internally and you can measure the improvement of your performance over the months and year in you own company,” he said.
“However, if you want to compare the performance of your ships against the rest of the industry or if you want to be measured by a third party, for instance an insurance company, on the performance of your ships, you have to come up with a set of KPIs that are accepted as standard.” The scope of the Intermanager KPIs ranges from operational performance and environmental issues to the retention rate of seastaff.
Another useful indicator is the average number of deficiencies discovered per port state control inspection, and operators will be able to judge themselves against this benchmark.
At the moment, adherence to the KPIs is purely voluntary, but Mr Morel is optimistic that one day they could form the basis of regulation.
“We do believe that one day they will no longer be voluntary. We had in the room people like the commission. We had the IMO, we had the regulators, in addition to all the other associations. All these people were very enthusiastic about our progress.”
Once widespread acceptance had been established on the grounds, it would only be a matter of time before standards were imposed externally, he said.
“One day, each ship will have to have its scorecard, with all its list of KPIs and we will always be able to compare ship number one with ship number 27,” he said.
“This is the idea: to create the cement in the industry so that everyone can work in the same language when it comes to measurement of performance.”
Phase two of the KPI project, which will be jointly funded by Intermanager and the Norwegian Research Council, is now beginning, and leading members of Intermanager have committed some 1,100 hours of their staff time to input data for comparison and benchmarking.