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Having faced the challenges of Covid, Dubai headquartered Dockendale Ship Management has come out stronger and better, with no impact on the high-quality boutique customer service for which it is famous. Managing Director Satish Kumar revealed the company’s secrets to success and seafarer wellbeing to Richard Hagan.
Training on topic A ship cannot sail without her crew, and therefore Dockendale Ship Management puts a huge amount of effort and resources into ensuring that its seafarers are well taken care of. Crew morale, in particular, is always a focus, and as Mr Kumar detailed, the com pany maintains it through its strong emphasis on ongoing crew training, especially in electronics.
He added that a properly trained crew could identify the issues on board and share the right information to the maker of the
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“It’s something we maintain, and it makes us different from our competitors,” he said. “Our ability to offer customised ser vices is unique to us and it means that we’re constantly able to exceed customer expectations. Our ability to meet customers’ needs is appreciated via customer feedback forms. In that con text, we’ve maintained our generally high level of service and transparency throughout Covid, and today, the company is healthy and faring even better than before.”
According to Managing Director Satish Kumar, the company’s customer relationships are built on transparency and its ability to offer bespoke services.
INt he chaos and stress of Covid and its related uncer tainties and challenges, Dockendale Ship Management stayed the course and steadfastly con t inued to provide the customised customer service its clients love.
“Traditionally, mechanical systems were taught in detail, but today the industry is trending towards electronic control systems for the main engines as well as for ballast water treatment and other systems. We want to ensure that we empower our seafarers to understand how these systems work so that they can operate them effectively at sea.”
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The company additionally has a groundbreaking programme in place to continuously monitor and improve the safety of Dockendale Ship Management’s seafarers’ workplaces, and according to Mr Kumar, it all starts with handwritten notes. “Everyone on board is given a pen and a small notebook,” he said. “They record all of the risks they observe in their work every day, even in the smallest jobs. We encourage them to write everything down, even if it’s something as simple as a spanner that doesn’t quite fit its intended target. Those notes are seen in the office by our Manning Manager, who uses that information to improve the workplace safety of our seafarers.
Creating healthy workspaces Crew health is also vitally important to Dockendale Ship Management, and as we’ve seen during the Covid crew transfer crisis, mental health management is especially critical. Mr Kumar said the company’s staff visited vessels as and when possible and spoke to the crew and their families when their vessels docked in Indian ports. “We want to understand the crew’s mentality and mental health status,” Mr Kumar remarked. “We always say we want to know ‘the feeling behind the dealing’. How do the staff feel about our management approach? We don’t want to just assume that the staff are happy in their jobs and with the company’s decisions.”
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“The results of the programme have been great,” he con tinued. “The HR team constantly makes decisions about what we can improve based on those notes. These personal risk assessments have made a huge difference; accidents on board our ships have drastically reduced. We’re very proud of it,
machinery or equipment. Dockendale Ship Management is cur rently rolling out VSAT installations to all of its ships to improve their bandwidth further and improve communication ability.
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Certified sustainability Dockendale Ship Management proudly boasts both an ISO 9001 and an ISO 14001 certification. The Managing Director expanded on the company’s continued efforts to meet these and other envi ronmental and sustainability commitments. “Our policy is to go green,” he remarked. “We adhere to the Japanese kaizen philosophy of continued small improvement steps. One of those is reducing our use of paper and increasing digitalisation throughout our offices. “We’re also getting rid of plastic bottles in the office,” he con tinued. “We encourage our staff to keep filling a glass or steel bottle and drinking from that instead. It’s just another small step we’re Meanwhile,taking.”thecompany is also fully committed to meeting international standards with regard to ballast water treatment Mr Kumar confirmed that while the company’s newer ships were delivered with such systems already fitted, Dockendale has been actively installing the systems on the rest of its fleet. “In 2021 we installed BWTS equipment on six vessels, and as of May 2022, we’ve done four, with two vessels still remaining to be fitted in 2022. It has all gone according to plan so far, thanks to good communication from our suppliers.”
Dockendale Ship Management 7 especially because we don’t want anyone going back home with anWithinjury.”anaim to establish a framework for an effective system to c ontrol health and safety risks to crew, Dockendale is certified for ISO:45001. Fuelling the future Discussions around future fuels, as they’re known, continue to swirl throughout the shipping community. With so many potential fuels being offered as possible alternatives, ship owners and managers face critical decisions with potentially long-term repercussions. Mr Kumar confirmed that future fuels are an important debate at Dockendale Ship Management as well: “The whole world is struggling to choose the right fuel,” he said. “So in the meantime, we’re focused on being compliant with the IMO’s emissions regulations. “Of course, we’re studying all of the fuel options, including bio diesel, hydrogen, ammonia, LNG and others,” he continued. “Safety is obviously a concern with some of them, but we’re nonetheless at the initial stage of assessing the fuels market. As things progress, we’ll make a decision as to what the best choice of fuel is, but the availability of these fuels (and in the required quantities) is our biggest concern and the biggest challenge. “It’s an industry-wide problem and, frankly, everyone is in the dark as to what the right future fuelling decision is,” Mr Kumar lamented. “Everyone is basically just waiting to see what is the best fuel going forward – considering economics and safety.”
Concluding, Mr Kumar offered some thoughts on Dockendale Ship Management’s future. “Optimism keeps people alive today, so we’re always opti mistic even though the global market isn’t looking great. Nonetheless, our plans are to get more ships onto our portfolio and to keep moving ahead toward our goals. I always say that we haven’t come all this way just to stay here. We have to move forward. We’re limitless.” n “Optimism keeps people alive today, so we’re always optimistic even though the global market isn’t looking great. Nonetheless, our plans are to get more ships onto our portfolio, and to keep moving ahead toward our goals. I always say that we haven’t come all this way just to stay here. We have to move forward. We’re limitless”
