Hazcheck Systems - Dangerous Goods Software

Hazcheck Enterprise: CASE STUDY - Deepsea container line

This large container line has 25 vessels and trades on several routes in conjunction with various partners. There are two main head offices that deal with hazardous cargo, one in Europe and one in the US. Altogether including managers there are 12 staff that deal directly with dangerous goods and at each port there is at least one company representative who is involved in declaring the cargo to the local port authorities. The shipping company handles approximately 200,000 dangerous goods item per annum including partner shipments. Each vessel makes approximately 100 port calls per annum.

Previous working practice

Previously the company relied on a manual process to check against all IMDG Code provisions and also all in-house, vessel, port and partner restrictions. This was done by consulting the IMDG Code on CD-Rom and manual checking against lists of other applicable restrictions in in-house manuals and working agreements.

The booking originates from the dangerous goods shipper or freight forwarder and is initially received by the local shipping line representative who enters the dangerous goods into the booking system and sends the request to be handled by the one of the main hazdesks.

Taking a specific port call at one of the major European ports as an example the shipping line has requests for 200 dangerous goods items in 64 containers. Of these items 80 are received from partner lines.

In order to validate all dangerous goods for this particular port call the following steps were taken:

Check each item's entry in the IMDG code including packing, physical state and concentrations

Segregation checking all UN numbers and class

Specific segregation against chemical families, 12 of the items have specific chemical groups as per section 3.1.4.4 of the IMDG Code

Check each item against the vessels restrictions

Check each item against the ports restrictions

Check each item against the in-house restriction list

Approval back to the originator

Provide a summary of approved cargo to the planner in order for a prestow to be completed

Provide a summary to the local port agent in order to notify the port authorities of what cargo will be loading on the vessel

Finalise the manifest

Communicate the manifest to the next port and/or discharge port

By referring to the IMDG code and restriction lists manually this process took the following amount of time:

Steps 1-3: 800 minutes (13.3 hours)

Steps 4-7: 480 minutes (8 hours)

Steps 8-9: 240 minutes (4 hours)

Steps 10-11: 140 minutes (2.3 hours)

Total time to validate all cargo manually at this port took 1660 minutes (27.7 hours)
Note: none of the items loaded at this port were restricted nor required any further port approvals or validation

The Hazcheck Solution

Using Hazcheck Enterprise in conjunction with Hazcheck Gateway saved this company substantial time and effort. The same process as the manual validation above is followed but by incorporating the use of these two Hazcheck systems.

Once the local shipping line representative receives the initial booking it is entered directly into Hazcheck Gateway where it is completely validated against the IMDG code restrictions and all applicable vessel, port and in-house restrictions. Once validation is completed it is approved directly back to the originator. The booking is also sent via email with attached IFTMBF message direct to the central hazdesk for automatic upload into the main Hazcheck Enterprise system. Once the hazardous deadline is reached a call planners list is accessed by the vessel planner in order to complete the prestow. This booking summary is also accessed by the local port agent and sent by IFTDGN message for automatic upload into the local port authority system. The manifest is produced once all stow positions have been entered and can be accessed by the next port and discharge port by simply calling the vessel voyage in the system.

In following the steps in the manual process the time taken to validate all dangerous goods bookings for this port is as follows:

Steps 1-7: 300 minutes (5 hours)

Steps 8-9: 10 minutes

Steps 10-11: 90 minutes

Total time for full validation for this port using Hazcheck systems takes 400 minutes (6.6 hours).

Productivity gains over a week using Hazcheck Enterprise and Gateway

The Deepsea container line has on average 48 port calls a week and loads an average of 60 dangerous goods items per vessel, giving a total of 2885 dangerous goods items to be validated per week.

Using the figures in the example above it shows us that the manual process takes 8.3 minutes per item to validate and provide the necessary information to the planner and port. This gives us a total of 23945.5 minutes (399.1 hours per week).

Again using the figures above the automatic process takes 2 minutes per validation and communication to planner and port authorities. This gives us a total of 5770 minutes (96.2 hours).

Overall Productivity Gain: 302.9 hours per week

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Exis Technologies are systems developers of the Computerised IMDG Code for the International Maritime Organization