Using BI to support vessel planning

Last year’s report included the following step towards our know-how and skills related goals: “Business Intelligence (BI) systems to support our planning decisions”.

Over the past year, our IT team has been working solidly towards understanding and connecting the company’s different operational data sets.

Head of IT Ollie Barton-Jones: “This is complicated but largely invisible work to understand how to robustly extract data and then figure out when those data sets are describing the same thing. We now have the first deliverable from this connected data set – the Vessel Departure Estimator.”

Launched in June 2025, the estimator charts the container movements to and from the vessel, so a more accurate estimate of completion can be calculated, with regard to meeting vessel departure times. “A bit like a cricket run rate calculator, while the graph appears simple, there is a lot going on underneath, to hit the target.”

Ollie says the estimator has two main uses. “From their mobile devices, our Marine team can instantly get an idea if a vessel is likely to meet its departure time. Missed departures are costly, with marine resources all scheduled ready to go – pilots, vessels, tugs – as well as the work landside to safely release a vessel.

“The Operations team are using the estimator as an overview during a vessel exchange. The underlying data sets help identify root causes of delays, while maintaining a safe, productive exchange. 

“Underneath the chart, we are capturing everything that happened during that exchange – straddle and side loader GPS movements, rail times, yard capacity, safety incidents, container movements, workforce rostering and timesheet adherence, delay codes and more still.”