PHILIPSBURG:— Two senior staff members from St. Maarten Shipping & Stevedoring NV (SSS), Junior Diaz, SSS Chief Stevedoring Operations, and Bernando Velasquez, SSS Terminal General Manager, recently returned from a field study at Port of Bridgetown, Barbados as part of Pilgrim’s group of company’s workplace human resource development program.
The objective of the field trip was for Diaz and Velasquez to observe general stevedoring and terminal operations; get insight into Terminal Operating Systems; attend training sessions; and observe working onboard vessels.
The working visit to the Port of Bridgetown took place from August 25-31. Port of Bridgetown is a full-service, international trade seaport managed by Barbados Port Inc. All major cruise lines have chosen the Port of Bridgetown as a port of call, and a number of them have chosen the port for homeporting operations.
The Port of Bridgetown is the first seaport in the English-speaking Caribbean to be accredited the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001:2015 Quality Management System (QMS) designation. This achievement not only enhances the Port’s competitiveness as a full-service international trade seaport but also creates the framework to standardize business processes, enhance the quality of products and services, improve operational effectiveness, boost productivity, enhance customer satisfaction, and better manage risks in the organization.
George Pelgrim, president of Sint Maarten Shipping & Stevedoring, said he was very pleased with the selection of the Port of Bridgetown, which the Institute for Industrial Solutions (IIS) chose as a field study for his organizational development program due to its high standards of quality and excellence in port operations.
“It is our intention to allow our staff to experience and see what type of cargo operations exist in other regional ports. Port of Bridgetown was selected because it’s the major port of entry for approximately 90 per cent of the goods used in the manufacturing and retail sectors in Barbados. There is a lot that can be learned from each other as small and medium-sized ports, and these trips can only enhance our own port terminal operations.
“Diaz and Velasquez, at the end of their field trip, would have obtained a working knowledge of terminal operating systems and options to support the improvement of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) operations; competencies to improve working vessels and terminals; working knowledge of gang management; and the ability to apply the knowledge gained across different ports,” SSS President and Philanthropist George Pelgrim explained.
The trip was coordinated by the Institute for Industrial Solutions (IIS) based in Kingston, Jamaica, led by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Trainer Osric Forrest, and Technical Expert/Assessor Radcliffe Spence.
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