Fourth IAPH Regional Webinar focuses on implementing Port community systems, a proactive approach to port business continuity and planning an effective port community outreach program
In the latest IAPH Webinar which was organised last Thursday in partnership with the Inter-American Committee on Ports (Comisión Interamericana de Puertos - CIP), Chief of the Secretariat Jorge Duran introduced and moderated the session, welcoming the broad CIP/OAS audience attending from Latin American and Caribbean maritime communities as well as other international participants.
In the first intervention, Dwaine Powell , Director - Port Community System (PCS) of the Port Authority of Jamaica provided participants with a comprehensive explanation on how digitalization of port processes were accelerated. “The important message we told our stakeholders was that this was not going to be an IT project” he commented. “We described the Port Community Systems implementation as a change management project, as we wanted to re-engineer and in some cases automate processes in order to increase efficiency. That requires capacity building as well as bringing all stakeholders around the table to get their insights and opinions.”
In the second intervention, Tessa Major, Director, International Business & Innovation of the Port of Açu, Brazil and IAPH Regional Vice President for Central and South America explained how taking the lead on an oil spill disaster with unknown origin off the coast of Brazil in 2019 led to a comprehensive, WPSP award-winning Emergency Preparedness Project which brought the entire community together to combat that and future crises. In turn, as the global pandemic crisis unfolded in March 2020, the Port of Açu was instrumental in establishing the IAPH-WPSP COVID19 Taskforce. Composed of experts from IAPH member ports who provided advice and crucial guidelines, and based on their own experiences of dealing with the crisis, a guidance document for all ports was initiated by Tessa and her team that was formulated and updated for general use, as well the regular IAPH-WPSP COVID19 Port Economic Impact Barometer report, which will have its sixteenth edition published next week based on survey results of global ports.
Tessa Major commented: “ Our next step has been to convert the COVID19 Task Force with its members into the IAPH Technical Committee on Risk and Resilience in order to accelerate the process of establishing sound guidance to ports, small and large, in terms of how to get started with a business continuity strategy. We expect a number of outputs and guidance documents in this respect in consultation with the IAPH port member community.”
In the third intervention, Monica del Rosario Arias Moreno, Advisor to the President, National Port Authority of Peru (APN) gave an all-encompassing overview of the organization’s community outreach strategy with specific reference to the case study of the Port of Callao. Covering areas such as infrastructure development, recruitment of local workforce, technological enhancements to create a smart city, cultural heritage, investment in educational and social responsibility projects, APN has established formal ties with the Government of Callao culminating in this authority creating the port city relation council in 2020.
Monica commented: “A sustainable port-city relationship evolved from socially responsible actions at a national level in 2015-16 to a local one directly with the Government of Callao, with a lot of hard work put in by our Port Authority as well as our stakeholders.”
Concluding the session, IAPH President and Deputy General Manager of the Port of Barcelona Santiago Garcia-Milà was delighted to address all Hispanic-speaking colleagues, reiterating the excellent work of the CIP/OAS in bringing the Latin American and Caribbean communities together virtually for the event.
IAPH Managing Director Patrick Verhoeven, who introduced the webinar describing the new work program of the organization, commented “Our thanks go to our port colleagues from Central and South America as well as the Caribbean for their continuous input and feedback into our IAPH-WPSP COVID19 taskforce and especially our economic impact barometer survey over the last ten months. As one of the most responsive regions of the world we have been able to collate vital data which will now be used to feed into a long-term barometer of port resilience as mentioned by our Regional Vice President Tessa Major. We look forward to working with you all, and having some of you join us as IAPH members and associate members.”
Contact:
Victor Shieh, IAPH Communications Director : victor.shieh@iaphworldports.org
Tel : +32 473 98 08 55
About the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH):
Founded in 1955, the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH) is a non-profit-making global alliance of 170 ports and 140 port-related organisations covering 90 countries. Its member ports handle more than 60 percent of global maritime trade and around 80 percent of world container traffic. IAPH has consultative NGO status with several United Nations agencies, including the IMO. Through its knowledge base and access to regulatory bodies, IAPH aims to facilitate energy transition, accelerate digitalization and assist in improving overall resilience of its member ports in a constantly changing world. In 2018, IAPH established the World Ports Sustainability Program (WPSP). Guided by the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, it aims to unite sustainability efforts of ports worldwide by sharing best practices through its project portfolio and collaborative partnerships.