Latest / UnDocked: The Maritime Transformation Show / Seafarer Retention, Human Factors, and the Limits of Compliance with Claire Georgeson
Transcript
- Raal: Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of Undocked. Hello Nick Chubb. Nick Chubb: Hello, Raoul Harris. How are you and where are you? You don't look like you're in your normal place. Raal: No, I'm not. I'm not in my normal milieu. You find me in the delightful Limassol in Cyprus, where I am here for Intertanko meeting among other things. And a very welcome to Claire Georgison from Sci-Fi. Hello, Claire. Nick Chubb: Very nice. Claire Georgeson: Hello chaps, thank you for having me. Nick Chubb: It's always a pleasure. Raal: Well, it's great to have you you and I met, I fancy it was in Dubai some years ago when you were working with Intertanko. Today's companies drowning in data. Performance dashboards, compliance feeds, voyage tools, emissions reports, and yet, when the time comes to make a real commercial call, the teams still fall back on gut feel. Why? Because more data hasn't meant better decisions. The Great Integration, a new report from Danilek and Thetius, looks at why fragmented systems are quietly eroding decision quality and what owners can do about it. Claire Georgeson: Correct, yes, good memory. Raal: Much has changed. just for the listeners, can you tell us first of all, just a bit about yourself and your journey in maritime? Claire Georgeson: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for asking. So I am the CEO and founder of Syfy. My background comes from commercial shipping. So I spent a number of years working with a variety of different owners and operators, primarily in commercial. So chartering, fixing ships, making money, all that sort of fun stuff with a little bit of operations. Raal: Practical read for anyone who senses their tools should be doing more. Download it for free at danaleck.com Claire Georgeson: Eight years ago, I decided that I wanted to expand my repertoire a little bit and I joined Intertanko with the idea to just get more of a sort of varied view on what was actually happening in the market, in the industry, where the concerns were for the owners, where it fit into the regulatory sense, which then sort of led me into this sort of journey of setting up sci-fi and then looking at can we collect data as we do on the ships? So we collect data. around vessels positions and how efficiently and effectively the vessels operate, could we do that for the human element? And here we are. Raal: Yeah, and I have to say, when I found out what you're up to, it's a real sweet spot for me personally, but it's also become a bit of a theme on the show, where does the kind of human element fit from a data perspective, which are all the kind of... things we'll be getting into today. So I'd love to know how you ⁓ found yourself in shipping. Claire Georgeson: Goodness me, So originally I university, I actually wanted to be a teacher or a journalist. ⁓ so my big sort of, ⁓ when I'm half Norwegian, so it's kind of actually in blood and ⁓ soul. Nick Chubb: Shipping was the natural next step then. Raal: Yeah. ⁓ okay. Claire Georgeson: respect. But yeah, so my original kind of plan was to go into teaching, albeit I hate children. So I actually don't really know how that would have worked in practice. And I was waiting for my placement. So in the UK, you have a thing called a PGC, which is for a year, but you have to apply and then you basically get placement through the local authority or through the government. And whilst I was waiting for that friend of mine, her father was a recruitment agent and he represented, it like a company, it was an Italian dry bulk owner and he said oh there's this job going it's receptionist work it's in London I was skint he was like you know do you want to of sub in for us I was like yeah absolutely that'd be fine so I sort of answering phones I the skills that receptionists have amazing I'm not a receptionist so I was sort of answering the phone going what do you want and after about sort of two weeks the owner of the company or the son's owner said well I don't really think this is for you but you know you've got a bit of gumption behind you do you want to sort of come and sit with me and look FFAs, sort of operations and I said okay well you know I'm getting paid X how much does this pay does it pay anymore and he said Okay, he a little bit more. So said, okay, great, I'll do that. And I did that for two or three months. And then I went to one of the YBA, the Young Baltic Association, evenings. big shout out to them if I think they still do their evenings and it's a really great recruitment place to be if you're young and you really want to get into shipping. ⁓ I actually met the managing director at the time of Maersk Broker and he said, we have a graduate scheme. You should apply. ⁓ You it might be interesting for you. And I said, well, how much does it pay? and he said it pays X and I was like, you're flying! Raal: I can't help but detect a slightly mercenary tendency. Nick Chubb: Sign me up. you Claire Georgeson: And herein lies the story. yeah, and that's the end of that. So yeah, I basically followed like Jack and the Beanstalk. I followed the tree to the sky and ended up there. So yeah, that was it really. And then since then, I have just never looked back. Raal: So would you say then that there has always been a strong commercial focus for you in thinking about it? mean, there's no shame in that at all. I mean, that's basically what makes the industry tick, right? Claire Georgeson: you Absolutely, absolutely. And I think there was, mean, when I started out, it was very, I mean, it still is very well dominated, which is absolutely fine. It's the nature of the beast. But I remember there was this was kind of this, I don't know, money sort of equaled success for me in particular, it ⁓ kind of followed this of if you are seen and you want be seen as successful, then you to be earning a good and you need to have the the kind the status all this other stuff with it. And actually doing that, found that ⁓ I think a lot of prevalent problems that we actually see in shipping in general ⁓ is because of this model, because it is so focused the commercial on us and the importance of that. ⁓ I mean, when I was years in the industry, ⁓ I'd been on a ship ⁓ I mean, it was it really quite bad. And we used to fix ships. during the height of piracy that were obviously transiting the Indian Ocean, sending seafarers through, having absolutely zero concept of what it would look like to have armed guards on board or whether there should be armed guards on board and who would then pay for that. And that led me to this sort of big deep question of actually, where is this industry heading if you fundamentally have big population of shore side that are very technically, operationally, like commercially capable, but actually just have any real-world experience when it actually comes to operating the actual vessels and what those risks are. So yeah, very commercial and I think that was a good thing. Nick Chubb: remember being ⁓ board ship and ⁓ bitterly about people who were sat in the office ⁓ the commercial team ⁓ ships ⁓ very little ⁓ regard for what was going on on board. So it's nice to hear someone say that. ⁓ Raal: mean, ⁓ Yeah, but I mean, and it kind of get, you know, there's a lot to unpack already in what you've been saying there. But is it that there is a bit there about people ⁓ and their ability to contribute to that commercial successive operations and that not really being something that's really looked certainly from a data perspective and you know people glibly get up on stage and say ⁓ you know people are at the heart of our success or the most important thing whatever but when they when they get off stage they're then looking at their freight rates and they're kind of bunkered and the OPEC's would you say that that is something that you kind of have towards looking at trying to understand the ROI of people of seafarers and crew? Claire Georgeson: Yeah, absolutely. And we probably don't do it as succinctly as that. So, Roel, we might steal that and put it in our marketing pitch. ⁓ So, thank you. Raal: Hey, my are very ⁓ Nick Chubb: good. Claire Georgeson: ⁓ bringing it back to where value So ⁓ from an asset perspective, the asset is ship ⁓ and that is shipping through and through. you're in a ⁓ container shipping or wet cargo, cargo, whatever it might be, even yachts. ⁓ it is chartered out, it's an asset, very similar to But the fundamental difference is the people who are on board these vessels are the ones that operate those ships and there is no autonomous shipping out there that enables the vessels to operate as an asset without that. So what we're trying to do is then reframe this asset, I would say perception of actually where does the asset lie? The asset is the ship for sure, but the asset is also the people. And if you don't treat people as the professionals in which they are, and within that you are then able to kind of draw some commercial operational reasoning from that, then you're only running at 50 % of your potential from ⁓ a commercial perspective. That's kind of what we try to do. But when you obviously do this with people at the core of what you do, it's a very difficult conversation to have because of course, you then talk about people as an asset and they go, I understand that, but then you talk about them almost as a cost, you talk about them as a resource and it People go, ⁓ no, we can't do this. It is too impossible, it's too difficult. it's kind of ethically, it's a bit of a gray area. But I think it's a notion that needs to be had. Raal: Well, yeah, I I fully agree with you. Nick and I did a thesis report together. It was called Human Capital Management and it was the bottom line is what we called it. And the idea that we were driving out there and Nick and his team conducted the research And it was really looking to... to a model where you actually thought of people as an asset, something to invest in that would directly impact the bottom line. So rather than where they normally end up, which is in OPEX. And one of the things that I found interesting to your point was the number of times that people got quite uncomfortable and even a bit prickly using terms like human capital management. And they would sort of say, well, you can't talk about people in that commoditize in that way. ⁓ my response was, was no, that's exactly how you're going to get better, better terms for them, better treatment for. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Raal: because we're in this commercial industry, if we can actually prove that people are real factor in your commercial success, then they're gonna get a lot more and better treatment. maybe at this point we should the audience, because ⁓ we've kind of flirted around the of what sci-fi is all about, but maybe just give us the kind of product ⁓ description, what does it do, how does it work and all that sort of thing for people. Claire Georgeson: Yeah, absolutely. So we decided to try, as I said, we wanted a model where we could gather data from people I'm not a data analyst. I'm not a psychologist. ⁓ I'm my sort of background is, as I said, very commercial, very shipping, operational. ⁓ So ⁓ whatever we designed, ⁓ had to be ⁓ first of all, easily easy to implement. nothing that had be ⁓ plugged into the ⁓ that had to sort of go through any of, difficult implementation and onboarding and we didn't want to build a mobile application because apps at sea don't work you have to gamify them and then it's very difficult to then keep the retention so we thought right very simply what do seafarers that have connectivity everyone has a mobile phone these days so let's find ⁓ a way of being able to communicate with the in the same that they do every day so it's whatsapp it's facebook messenger it's telegram It's the social media, let's say, functions and systems that they use to communicate with their friends and family. ⁓ So we'll work with the owner. ⁓ We ⁓ do around sort of 30 questions. The idea is one question, two questions each day. ⁓ It the seafarers no more than about 10 seconds for them answer the whole set of questions. We it in terms of a one to five scale, but then there's also an opportunity for them to add more free text and this is around then the effect of something, what can change. We're basically just galvanizing the seafarers thoughts on that day on a particular subject, be it communication, motivation, recognition, tools and safety, stuff like that. And then we feed all that into our database and then we report that anonymously back to the owner. So it's a very simple system, but with the big data that sits behind it, you can then start looking at predictability and probability and yeah, stuff like that. Raal: Yeah. Nick Chubb: Before we into the ⁓ I'm just curious ⁓ know ⁓ you chose to start a company to do this. Because you were in Intertanko before, and this could have easily been an Intertanko initiative. ⁓ obviously felt it was ⁓ big enough problem, and then obviously personally you wanted to take risk and ⁓ actually out on your own to do this. What was the driving motivation that? ⁓ Claire Georgeson: So as I said when I started, no sort of background in shipping at all kind of fell into it, fell into the well. there were a few things it took me quite a few years to sort of figure out so whilst I was working for a large LPG owner and this was at the height of the piracy we had a number of vessels that used to transit the Red Sea so they would do I think it was like Turkey to the Far East and I was 23, 24 years old at the time and I remember fixing the sort of the ships the contract for these vessels and still remember like you couldn't have armed guards on LPG carriers because there was no mannedation for it. why would you live ammunition on a gas ship, complete no go? So we used to send these vessels through and I remember my boss saying to me, but it's fine, the seafarers, if anything happens, the seafarers can sort of fight. And I remember thinking, really? I mean, I'm pretty sure that they're professional mariners and they're not John Wick. It's a strange. And then... Kind of then looking retrospectively back at it. That's kind of what we expected the seafarers to do so we'd sort of we disengage from their professionalism as mariners and just sort of assumed that they could then do all this additional stuff and then I moved to another owner, a owner who treated their crew like family. I mean they were absolutely brilliant. They had super high retention rates, but they still had off-hires and they still had LTIs and there was still this whole this mess of problems that no one could really kind to get to the bottom of a lot of it was organisational. ⁓ then when I moved to Intertank I thought, okay, well then how does this look in the industry? No, actually is this ⁓ of importance to the owners? And it was, but also the owners ⁓ no ⁓ in which they could tackle it. ⁓ the owners are very, ⁓ brilliant in their sort of, ⁓ know, see it, say it, solve it. So again, well it's mandatory and it's regulated. ⁓ But actually then when it's commercial and it's very much their commercial Importance towards their company they get very protective of it So I realized that a function like into tanker because it's all about knowledge sharing in sort of the wider industry It's never gonna work because the whole function of a member's organization is that you share best practice so Something like we do it does have to be third party and it does have to be independent because it is also a system that the owners use themselves strategically and sustainably. So yeah that was kind of the I would say full process behind it. Nick Chubb: Makes sense. Raal: I think there's one of the just we have a lot of ⁓ software vendors and stuff and listen to the show and, obviously as a vendor, what ideally want is to the company to share with you all of the things that are really going on in the because then you have a problem that you can then apply your people to and try and add value to. But the reality is that for obvious reasons, companies are very reluctant to share that. And then you sort of try and do that kind of initiative on a trade association level, let's say. been part of so many of these because everyone wants ⁓ everyone else to show theirs and they don't want to show them, ⁓ perhaps a bad analogy, ⁓ you you ⁓ get idea that they want the results everyone else's, incidents and stuff. Claire Georgeson: Thank Raal: that's where it sort of falls over. how do you approach that when with, the customers that you're working with? Cause obviously you're getting, mentioned it's anonymized data there, which implies people can put in whatever, whatever they want to put in. they're trusting you with a lot of potentially dirty linen, aren't they ⁓ in there? And how does that Claire Georgeson: Yeah, it's a great way of putting it. Interestingly enough, one of the most common, I would say, reactive no's is often, what if you flag up an issue that I don't know about and you tell me about this issue and I can't physically do anything about it? So prime example of that is shore leave. So shore leave is a systematic problem in shipping. It's not going to be fixed by the will of an individual owner. But leave is something that we constantly get feedback from. And, know, it's a problem and seafarers need it. a company. have a long-term strategic plan. ⁓ And within that big strategic plan, they're going to have markers and metrics that will help them to where they need to get to. ⁓ So ⁓ when it comes to what we do, ⁓ It's actually about the positives that you'll from It's the, look, we benchmark the vessels then we also benchmark can we can profile populations on board. The population thing is also super important age groups, genders, nationalities, ranks, very important. What are all the really successful things that are happening on a group of ships that you might not even know? You might have really successful communication of one type of vessel or one particular vessel and that vessel might also have incredibly low LTIs and off-hires. What is systematically happening on that vessel that isn't happening on these ships over here? Do you focus on the good to then kind of out and elevate the ships that don't have that. And that's how we approach it. in general, there is this panic of, ⁓ you're going to put out my dirty linen and hang it on the sort of washing line for everybody to see, ⁓ which is a very natural response. ⁓ But also very naive response because you are making the assumption that your company is fine. ⁓ And I think we're all grown up enough to recognise that especially from the seafaring perspective, especially with retention and also now being able to recruit, got ahead of a lot of new ships coming on board, especially within the LNG market. ⁓ The is not self sustainable anymore. We need to do something different. Otherwise, ⁓ we're to be in a bit of a pickle. And it's not the big owners that get absolutely sort of honked by this. It's the smaller owners. It's the legacy owners. ⁓ And the ones that are ⁓ The industry is not self sustainable anymore. We need to do something different. Otherwise, ⁓ we're going to be in a bit of a pickle. And it's not the big owners that get absolutely sort of honked by this. It's the smaller owners. the legacy owners. ⁓ And they're the ones that are real peril. real peril. Raal: I think there's always a gap between what people want to hear and what they need to know. And so I think that there's relatively few ways to kind of understand the lived reality of your seafarer cohort. It's always tricky. simple things like course feedback and things like that, people tell you typically tell you in that sort of scenario what they think you want to hear, How do you do that? give us some indication of ⁓ how you extract the value from it and what learning comes from the kinds engagement that you do with Claire Georgeson: So again, great question. would say the most obvious is the ability to benchmark. And was ⁓ an that I actually took from Intertanko. So the ability to take individual vessels and populations on board to be able to benchmark them against each other anonymously ⁓ and all the best practice from that and say, okay, well, look, these are the things that we know are really successful here. ⁓ What if we try it here, you know, with X and with Y? And it's working with ⁓ right time type of owner and the right stakeholder. albeit I'm in the earlier sort of part of this podcast, probably portrayed myself as a kind of a bit of a Cruella De Vil commercial, sell your sort of 101 Dalmatians and off we go. But we also work with really, really good owners and the not so good owners or the ones that have tried to use our system to almost greenwash what we do a little bit, we stepped away from that because it hurts us, it hurts our brand, it hurts the seafarers. really detrimental and there's just no benefit, there's no value in this. ⁓ again, it's the identifying of the owners of which ones are actually going to be able to use this system successfully and implement it. ⁓ then having realistic expectations with our check-ins. ⁓ is that plan? What does six months look like? ⁓ does five years look like? ⁓ then which changes and ⁓ did you do within that? important component of all of this is then feeding all of this back individually to each individual seafarer because like all of these feedback loops unless I know what I'm contributing to I'm not going to contribute to it Nick Chubb: exactly where my next question was going because you there's the risk right is that the feet the seafarers feedback lots of stuff that the owners either can't or won't take action on and then they end up you know giving feedback into the void or it creates that appearance and then I assume they would lose motivation to actually engage in with a platform like this so how do you make sure that once something comes in that once a clear pattern emerges that you're able to work with the ship owner to find a fix or possibly share that as you say, kind of focusing on the positive, share that positivity out across the entire fleet. Claire Georgeson: Yeah, so we obviously we have our touch points with our owner and we do it between every month or every quarter, whatever suits them. But generally we will sort of touch base at least of each month because that's when the new cycle starts. And then we produce a variety of reports. Some of those reports are seafarer So they would go back to the individual vessels or they would be shared individually with the seafarers if that's what the company decides. ⁓ But also sort of sitting down, speaking to the owners, ⁓ understanding strategically what they're going to do with this. It takes a while, right? It's not a quick fix, but it could take a year. It could take 18 months. It could take longer for them to go, okay, well, we now sort of understand that we've got a systematic problem. Let's say with something as simple as PPE. So super simple. Sometimes what happens is X grade is or X provider of PPE is paid for, goes to the port, goes to the agent and lo and behold, Y turns up on the ship and it's like, no one knew about that because Sometimes the kind of feedback loop from the master, it's not a priority. So the owner ends up losing that visibility. And this could be stuff that has lasted for like a year. Whereas with our system, we get it immediately because we just ask the question, is PPE that you're using, it ⁓ sufficient? If the company talk safety being their complete priority, ⁓ then is that PPE of highest standard it could possibly be? No, okay, well, why not? ⁓ because it's not ScanVir, it's ⁓ something else. ⁓ and other PPE providers are available. Raal: In terms of, I think that kind of hits on where I was going to go next, which is really sort of understand the business model a little bit. So ⁓ clearly is not something that you just kind of do a one-off pulse survey and everyone kind of gets the learning from it and sets up a six month project. You know, this is an ongoing thing. And is that the, is that the relationship with the customer? it subscription ongoing service? And from what you said, it sounds as though the value increases over time as you get more and Claire Georgeson: Yeah, very much so. mean, I wish again, if I put my commercial hat purely on, if it could be a sort of a pulse survey where you sort of dip in and dip out, it would be great for our business model and our revenue. lot of the regulation that comes out, especially with the human element in focus, ⁓ is biases ⁓ and we to debunk that. So we have to work with partners that are really in this for the long term. Raal: other thing that you were saying there about the PPE and stuff. ⁓ It sounds to like, because I've heard of other solutions that do this and they're looking at very specific elements of welfare, wellbeing would be ⁓ one example of which I know you were also, ⁓ that's part of you do. But would ⁓ it be to that you're taking a much broader set of metrics about the kind of lived reality of ⁓ the seafarer Claire Georgeson: Yeah, absolutely. And also just in terms of the organisation. So there was a huge case study done many years ago within the NHS. So when we again looked at where we can draw some, some inspiration from. looked at, okay, mining. What happens in the mining process? And we were like, we don't want to sort go back 100 years. So then we looked at aeronautics. And I mean, the budget that you would have for sort of astronaut training is astronomical. So, okay, what's another, what about like the NHS? they work, nurses and doctors work incredibly long hours. They do also work in very tight relationships in groups, but then they also do work in isolation in terms. And then we looked to, okay, well, what were some of the fundamental, some of the big problems, like the broad sort of scale, the broad brush problems that they have. And a lot of it was to do with the organization. And we thought, ⁓ okay, that's interesting. So then let's run a hypothesis, let's run a test with the sorts of questions that we want to ask. And let's go to a range of owners and a range of people in the industry that we know. And let's litmus test this, let's see if there's any palatability. So as well as asking about welfare, which is super important. also then also need to understand from the organization's perspective, the motivation like? What is the recognition? Simple things like this. Is there an appraisal system? ⁓ then more in depth things as well, like communication on board, communication each other, communication between you and your master, the master and the shore the shore back again. So we try and look at everything to then kind of get this very high level overview ⁓ of what happening on the ships that is then underwritten by, let's say, satisfaction. So it turns out very much in how satisfied is this vessel, which in all honesty, most of the way, like 99 % of all of the vessels have very high satisfaction. And it's because mariners are professionals. So of course, they take pride in their work. But then all the underlying sort of more in-depth data then points to where the gaps are. And the gaps could be around succinct communication yourself and the master. So if you're a junior, let's say you're a junior officer, you've been at C4, this might be your first contract, ⁓ you are Ukrainian and you're 24 years old and your master or your boss in this instance is 60 years old, has been working for nearly 30 years, knows it all as they should and is Filipino, there's a big cultural difference there. And a lot of the junior officers do not have work like they don't have lived on experiences So that's a huge gap. And there are tools, practical tools, training But in the six months that he or she is on board, that's a gap. And then what's the impact of that? It could be huge. That's what we're always trying to look at. We're trying to break down what are the individual problems and then how to fix them in a way, or at least how to identify it so it doesn't get any worse. Nick Chubb: it. What I find fascinating about this is, and I mean this as a compliment, that the level of simplicity that you are literally just asking questions and then listening to the answers. And obviously you're doing it at some level of scale with technology, but coming back to that fundamental point of asking questions, if you were speaking to a ship owner who wanted to get better at understanding some of those cultural gaps or some of those unmet needs that are difficult, that are not obvious, What would you advise them to do in terms of how to ask better questions of their crew, whether that's face to face or whether that's through a platform like yours? Claire Georgeson: Go. Yeah, well, first of all, have the ability to listen because you can ask as many questions as you like, but the active listening part of it is hard. And I think the way that it traditionally works is obviously a superintendent, somebody will go on board, they will sit down and they will interview or they will speak to the crew and get a general sense of it. you have to be quite so when you ask questions you have to have the problem before you're looking for the you know the of the solution or the data to then back that up and also a metric of actually understanding is this a problem because data can lead you down the complete wrong rabbit hole as well unless you have a really robust methodology being able to then figure out is this a problem and if it is a problem what part of it is the problem and then the ability to then litmus test it again by then checking okay so is it just this or is it something else is it linked to third party things? Raal: ⁓ is difficult to ⁓ do it? find ⁓ that's holy grail with training which is most of my background. You're looking for that ROI ⁓ and course even with huge data sets ⁓ there's many things that could be influencing it beyond what the training itself is doing. It becomes very very difficult. But just one thing, because I meant to ask earlier and we didn't get to it, but Nick kind of alluded to it there, reminded me. You're using, deliberately using existing channels ⁓ with You mentioned Telegram ⁓ as ⁓ What of engagement do you see from ⁓ seafarers? Claire Georgeson: So it's quite high. So it's sort of above 70 percent. It does fluctuate. We see a lot of seasonal fluctuations, especially with the vessels that are in the sort of BAG. Of course, at the moment, massive issues, especially with starlink and connectivity in those sort of regions. It's being quite detrimentally affected. But because it's not an app. ⁓ We don't need specific connectivity. Nothing to be downloaded. And we feed back constantly to the seafarers. Raal: Wow. Claire Georgeson: So if the seafarers ask us a question, we have the ability to reply to them immediately if we need to. if they answer a question and actually we're quite interested by we can ask them immediately. So our usage is usually around 70 % plus. But obviously the caveats are if there's, problems with connectivity, stuff like that. But in general, it is 70%, which is heck of a lot higher than kind of standard survey. Raal: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, really good, really good. Nick Chubb: me question our surveys we do with ETS. I'll have to stretch how we're doing them. Claire Georgeson: Yeah. Raal: Well, speaking of that, Claire was talking, ⁓ around trying to benchmark these kinds of things, crew sentiment, crew welfare, these kinds of things. I mean, you did a report recently with Rightship that we've talked about on the show. one of the things that came out of that report was charterers in particular not really having any measures to hang on to be able to make some sort of qualified. This is in terms of choosing a vessel which prioritises these kind of things and has initiatives. Nick Chubb: Yeah, one of the issues that we highlighted as part of that report was, I guess, a kind of lack of common infrastructure for charters, ship owners, potentially even seafarers right at the front line of this stuff, to be able to share what good looks like, share what bad looks like, and work on improvement. And maybe off the back of that, just be interested to are there... metrics that you think every ship owner should be measuring and every charterer should be asking for that can be pinned down to something as straightforward as a metric. Claire Georgeson: Hello? Interesting question. What I always get a bit, and this maybe is my intertanko brain, so I apologize, but I always get very nervous when we introduce the idea of the charterer into this conversation, because again, this promotes this additional level of complexity that, especially within the wet, so the tanker gas and LPG market, we've seen the charters have quite a fair amount of power. over an owner to make certain decisions around the ability to operate a vessel in the best interest of the owner. ⁓ We saw in COVID. the charterers would not allow vessels to change crew because they had concerns around ⁓ whether COVID might be introduced or sometimes was to do with the matrix of the crew. it was, ⁓ I don't, can't think of the sort the most colloquial, the most correct PC way of putting it but it was a shit show the have responsibility Raal: We'll take that. Nick Chubb: Yeah. Claire Georgeson: to allow the owners to be owners and also that the seafarers are seafarers. And what we see a lot of is this, it sounds awful, but a lot of seafarers are now becoming glorified secretaries. There is so much paperwork fatigue and that is to do with the charters or it's to do with the traders, putting so much pressure because they want daily reports and updates and forms to building and it's purportedly because of regulation or because of the ports or whatever it might be. So the seafarers are spending a huge amount of time doing this kind of of secretarial of paperwork stuff when it really has absolutely no impact and it shouldn't be part of their job description. So I think to answer your question It almost pushing back a little bit and look, this my bloody ship and these are my crew ⁓ and allowing the seafarers to be seafarers and not getting drawn into this big debate of, ⁓ well, ⁓ charter wants Y and that guy over there wants A. No, it's ⁓ completely unfair. ⁓ see lot of that feedback in the data. ⁓ and it's having an impact, it's having an impact on fatigue and distraction, it's having an impact on off-hires and LTIs and cargo contaminations. There is a real problem here between what is expected, what's being allowed to happen and actually what the job of the seafarer is and should be. Nick Chubb: Just to be sure I've understood that correctly, are you effectively saying that you have seen a pattern of of onerous demands on the crew when it comes to things like paperwork, ⁓ reporting, all of that sort of stuff, ⁓ actually having an impact on the overall performance of the vessel, ⁓ I guess is quite ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ I understood that right? ⁓ Claire Georgeson: Correct, yes it has a detrimental, it has a huge detrimental effect. Raal: I think it's, I mean, you mentioned up top, didn't you, that a lot of those people have very little understanding of the lived reality of seafarers and operations on board and what those lives are like, one of the issues that we see, and it's come up a few times on this podcast talking to people, is it's so fragmented in terms of stakeholders and the KPIs that are driving the stakeholders not being in harmony. And ⁓ I guess, I guess that the kind of data that you're pulling in is something that companies can use to present to their stakeholders as evidence, I guess, of the impact that some of these decisions are Claire Georgeson: Yeah, absolutely. We always say this. mean, if anything, a lot of the data that we get is super positive. And most people just assume that it will always be detrimental. It really isn't. Again, Seafarers are professional mariners. They know what they're doing and they will work to the best of their ability ⁓ to execute the job that they have do. ⁓ So what we always suggest to our is we use this data to push back, to show your stakeholders, ⁓ your charters or your oil majors or mini traders, whatever they might be, to say, look, you're a common market it's competitive market and you're benchmarking ⁓ X owner and X ship against owner and Y ship. ⁓ This is the reason why you take our vessel and this is also the reason why you should trust that we know what we're doing and our seafarers know what we're doing and because we have the data that promotes this and supports it ⁓ so we always say to our use it use it within TMSA ⁓ use it because it has to used strategically because otherwise there's no point in collecting this volume of data especially on something as sensitive as the human element. Raal: Well, I'm glad you brought up TMSA because this is another thing that I was going to you on. we mentioned when I met you, you were working with Intertanko and they work very closely with Ockinf. And you can see this move ⁓ through things human factors, So I guess my broader question is how much of what you're doing is being shaped by the way that OCIMF is going with this specific human factors focus with this real kind of ⁓ attention to ⁓ how work is performed. Claire Georgeson: That's a great question. I am glad you mentioned it because I really wanted to bring it up, but I wasn't sure how I would. So I have a real bugbear around enclosed space deaths. is homelessness. It drives me insane. My tiny brain does not understand why this is still happening and actually why it is increasing. ⁓ And that's after all the regulation, all the mandation. I think IMO brought in some regulations 2011 and ridiculous. So again, what is it? We all know that in closed space deaths are problematic. We all know what happens. So it's 50 % of all deaths occur because someone goes into an enclosed space, something happens and then a responder then follows them in. And I'm like, how, like this is insane, right? So we have lots of trainings and you know, big signs up and stuff like that, but there is fundamental something that happens in our brain when our peer or someone that we care about or someone that we work with suffers an incident that you cannot stop yourself from running into. So on a human, on a behavioural element that is, being fixed by ⁓ training and it's not fixed by big signs, ⁓ something is fundamentally happening doesn't allow people to think clearly about it. So is the disconnect? is that? And it's probably a whole host of other things. And it's also around how teams operate with each other, the relationships that they form, the kind of the way they together and especially in emergency scenarios and situations how they respond to that. Raal: I the I really wanted to understand, I guess, really, when ⁓ it down to your core market, is it the tanker industry because they're the ones that get this I'm just I know there are good operators in all sectors ⁓ and that are people working very hard you know to push up standards elsewhere but it seems to me that your sweet spot must be tankers. Claire Georgeson: Yeah, but that is probably also my background. My background has been tankers for the past 700 years. So it's just where I naturally gravitate to. probably also because the market. The market has been a lot healthier than the dry bulk market. The dry bulk guys have been basically in the sand pit for 20 years, right? So ⁓ they've really suffered. But you now have a ⁓ new building ⁓ program the dry vessels So what you're then seeing from that, especially for the smaller operators, is how are they going to crew these ships? Because a lot of the dry-bulk guys, what they naturally do is they gravitate towards tankers because the belief is that you've got to be much trained to operate this and therefore the salaries are slightly more increased, perhaps the benefits are better, ⁓ perhaps your career progression is more attractive. ⁓ So the dry-bulk owners are in peril at some ⁓ respects. They need to really understand what is happening on board their vessels because the Philippines, Northern Europe, Western Europe, those markets are dwindling. They're becoming much more expensive. a strategic owner, strategic owner that is looking at their 20-year ⁓ plan, the of their vessel ⁓ surely has to be interested in, actually, want to retain my crew, but want to retain my competent crew, not just my crew. ⁓ So where is the benchmarking as well that the crew that you have on align to your values and align to the company strategy? because if they have that then they will work to their best ability to ensure that they will run a safe healthy Raal: I mean, this is a question to both of you, if you look at shipping across all the sectors, it's drowning in data. There's so much data being picked up all the time. Not all of it is being well-mined and analyzed, there's huge volumes. The amount of data we have on the people that are actually making this whole thing tick is so minimal, isn't it? And I just wonder, know, both of you really, what's your perspective on why it's taken such a long time to get around to looking at this? Nick Chubb: don't necessarily know that that is a shipping problem. I think you could go to any large enterprise, particularly any large enterprise that's dispersed over different geographies and look at the level of sophistication they have when it comes to collecting data around people. And you can make the same argument, know, every organization is by people, cetera, et cetera. I reckon everyone's pretty unsophisticated. And actually, I'm... thinking out loud here I actually wonder that whether maybe shipping is more sophisticated than many other industrial sectors but much less sophisticated than you know aviation for example or you know going right to the extremes F1 or something like that but yeah Raal: Could be. Well, Claire, you mentioned NHS, which I should say for our international listeners, the National Health Service is one of the biggest employers in the world, isn't it? Not just in Europe. So Claire, mean, what's your, you you must have thought about this and what's your view Claire Georgeson: I would somewhat disagree with Nick, controversially, I apologise. ⁓ Nick Chubb: get my Claire Georgeson: I think in general, think there are organisations, there are companies out there that do operate multi sort of geographically. for example, is a global organisation. When I worked for Maersk, my goodness me, I mean, we used to say if you got stabbed in the butt, you would bleed blue. ⁓ You because everyone, everyone worked to same beat of the drum. had a brilliant way of bringing people on and really getting you in the Maersk mindset. But it comes again from the organisation. It's this organisational ownership and belief and the value base in which they apply ⁓ across everything. I think we do collect a lot of human data and shipping, ⁓ but the companies harvest it for themselves. ⁓ So EAPs are a huge thing. These sort of yearly ⁓ have the mission to see seafarers index, which is a great survey. But ⁓ again, in terms its value proposition, what does it tell us? Well, it fundamentally tells us that seafarers unhappy. which I would somewhat argue with, again, because happiness is a very difficult thing to benchmark. I think there is lot of human element data. It's just so fractured. ⁓ And it's almost valueless because you're to it and then benchmark it with ⁓ other like-for-like ships to learn from ⁓ So there is a lot data out there. ⁓ It's just not ⁓ It's like near-miss data. I find it absolutely that it's not public. should be, but it isn't. It's held ⁓ and it's stored by the owner or by the P &I club. And so if we're looking at learning experiences, if we're not sharing the data that should be available, we're in a bit of a pickle, right? Raal: Yeah. And I guess, to your point, if you did to share it on mass or, or, or, you know, pull a large number of company data points together, there would be, it would be one of the things that would be very, very tricky to standardize, wouldn't it? It's not like, you know, it's not like ⁓ money or fuel or, you know, these kinds things that you can measure and they're, and they're the same everywhere. there's a lot of semantics involved, isn't there? When you start kind people and behaviour and those sorts of things that would make it inherently tricky. But it does seem to me when you look that the whole of Human Factors work that Ockinf is doing comes from ⁓ the fact that a lot has been done to accidents and incidents down by systems, by all these different things and the stubborn bit that's left is that. much harder to quantify human bit, which is why they're putting so much effort and stuff into that. And which is, you know, potentially a big, big sweet spot for you Claire Georgeson: Even though it is difficult, we have to start somewhere. So ⁓ it's about, okay, this is coming. ⁓ And even though the IMO are always focused on the technical elements of shipping, ⁓ the human element, it will become mandated at some point. if it isn't directly from the then it will be through, ⁓ you know, sort of the MLC or MC, it'll be through someone. somewhere. and what Okimp for doing is brilliant but OCIMF is a members organization and there's nothing wrong with that but again the ⁓ focus for them is very much weighted towards the charterer ⁓ and the charterer not the ultimate operator of a vessel. The conversation has to include owners and it has to include all different parts of the industry. Your legacy owner with a small fleet of drybolt vessels then your more sophisticated owner that might have P funding or is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So we need to look at all these variables and really then understand what's the fundamental premise that binds this together? It's the crew. Okay, what is it about the crew then? So I think we do need to sort of think about it a bit. Raal: Just on that, out of curiosity, because it's a bit of a bugbear for mine. have you tried connecting any of the data that you've been ⁓ generating or been collecting on behalf of your customers? ⁓ Have you or looked to try and connect those to more operational ⁓ Claire Georgeson: So that's the big ambition. So we've worked with a variety of different organizations. We worked with CHIRP years ago, and we were looking at incident reporting. So looking at near miss, because they do a huge amount in sort of near miss and sort of causation. And then looking at those and then looking at our data, know, sort of ⁓ happening on the ship? And ⁓ how ⁓ does then link? And then ⁓ we track all data that's public, but there isn't enough of it out there, especially when it comes to near misses, off-hires, LTIs, ⁓ off-hires and LTIs forget about it, you never know about about that So that's where the kind of the iron curtain falls a little bit, which then makes it difficult for us. But working with the owners that at least share their data from their side is great because then at least it helps us build a hypothesis for that specific owner. Nick Chubb: So, would you give to an owner that has said, you're right, Claire, we should be doing this stuff, but we don't know where to start. We get the concept, we want to start somewhere, to use your word. What would you recommend they do in the first instance? Claire Georgeson: Give us a call, no I'm kidding. Nick Chubb: you Claire Georgeson: So an owner that has gotten to that stage is probably doing a hell of a lot of, or they've been doing a hell of a lot of stuff before that. So whether it's internal sort of data collection or they've got perhaps analysts that work or they're looking at AI, my ⁓ humble opinion is you need to look at a continuous data collection platform that is probably third party. ⁓ and CQ, Syfy, we are one of a few, so other providers are available, but that's probably the conversation that you would then need to have to really elevate whatever you're doing internally already. And also just accept that you are brilliant operators, but you're not always data-centric analysts, so kind of let the experts do that for you with the humblest of, know, kind of thank yous and pleasers because stick to what you know best, right? Raal: focus on your core. ⁓ the subject of advice, there'll be ⁓ a lot of ⁓ young women looking at this and ⁓ seeing someone in your position, CEO of ⁓ growing company, What advice would you give them? Claire Georgeson: ⁓ First of all, self-titled CEO, when you're the founder of a company, can call yourself anything you want. So I generally split between CEO and cleaner. So there you go. Yeah, exactly, quite. I'm not sure which one's better, to be fair. Nick Chubb: Ha Raal: Hahaha. ⁓ Yeah, chief cook of bottle washer, as they say. Claire Georgeson: if you're ambitious, whether male, female, but definitely if you are, don't be put off by the perception that this is male-dominated industry. ⁓ It is, but it's great. And that's a complete positive. It has to be, ⁓ because it's also unique, right, you. is a great industry, be it at sea or at shore. And if you are ⁓ joining the family, ⁓ you should definitely let anything, including which gender you are, stop you from doing so. So, ⁓ yeah. Raal: Yeah, brilliant. Nick Chubb: Great advice. I guess by way wrapping up, I'd just be interested to know what your long-term ⁓ is for sci-fi. Where you like it to be in the next ⁓ sort of five years or ⁓ Claire Georgeson: So we completely bootstrap. think that's quite unique in maritime tech. ⁓ And we do class ourselves as a maritime tech company rather than a kind of an NGO or a charity, which we're definitely not. But we bootstrap, so we live and die by sales. ⁓ And that is fundamentally how we're going to grow this company. We have to grow through client acquisition. ⁓ And so next five years, the plan is to continue to grow the client base. We would like to diversify. a little bit by having more sort small to medium size owners, the owners that probably need the most assistance, things like this, the ones that are perhaps in a lot of peril when it comes to retaining and retention, long term strategic planning for their crewing. So yeah, in five years time, it's just ⁓ kind of boring, I guess, they're of much of the same the same but just at a much larger scale. Nick Chubb: I massively admire anyone who tries to bootstrap in this industry, ⁓ bootstrapped a research company over a few years. It's tough, but it's very rewarding. it's... That sounds like a good idea. Claire Georgeson: We can share war stories over a beer, I'm sure. Raal: Well, Claire, mean, I think it's great to hear about what you've been working on. As I said, I think this is for me, this is a real sweet spot. This is so much that we can do in this space that we haven't done. And it's great that you're pioneering and you're doing it in a smart way. We're using, very low friction technology and asking for very little ⁓ from the seafarers in terms of their input ⁓ in work side of it, let's say, ⁓ given that you said about ⁓ them. already overloaded with admin and stuff like that. So it's been fascinating and wish you all the best of luck with it and look forward to seeing how the company grows. Claire Georgeson: Thanks, chaps. Thank you so much for giving us a platform. It's really appreciated. Nick Chubb: That'd be silly. If someone wants to reach out, what's the best way to do that? Claire Georgeson: ⁓ Very simply, you can reach us through hello at sci-fi. So it's hello at PSY-FYI.com or LinkedIn. That was Nick Chubb: Awesome. Really, ⁓ really lovely properly meet and hear story, Thanks so much coming the show. ⁓ Claire Georgeson: Thank you. Thanks guys. Raal: Cheers, everyone. Bye-bye. Nick Chubb: Bye. Claire Georgeson: Bye.