Tour d´EFFORTS

After we had accepted that the two frenchmen wouldn´t come, together with Brenda Daly, the Marketing and PR-Manageer of Dublin Port Company, Mick Sheehan, Training and Development Manager, Sylwia Owczarczak, Training Administrator, Deirdre Doyle, Coordination and Researcher, we met Enda Connellan, the CEO of Dublin Port Company over a cup of coffee. He was very interested in to hear about the challenges of communication in the EFFORTS project and was very supportive to this task.

A tour of the Port of Dublin

Brenda, Mick and I then started on a tour through the port by car. A remarkable thing I had already noticed when I had left the ferry is all the construction under way all over the port. It shows the high dynamic of Dublin and the port.

The terminals

We started with the Alexandra Quay East Container Terminal. The western berth is going to be modernised and parts of it are used for the around 50 cruise ships that called 2007 at Dublin. For the container handling on this terminal a very special mobile container crane is in operation:

While in Germany the container cranes come from China, in Ireland they come from Germany.

We saw the Lead and Zinc terminal and

carried on to the grain and feeding stuff terminal.

At the eastern part of the Alexandra Quay Container Terminal the equipment was modernised recently:

Across the river we could see the container bridges of the Marine Terminals Ltd. (MTL) which is Irelands most modern container terminal both in size and craneage. In total all container Terminals of the Port of Dublin had a throughput of 744000 TEU in 2007.

Here lies one of the interests of Dublin Port Co. in the EFFORTS project. Just across the street there residential areas and people feel disturbed by the noise such a terminal emits as well as the Ro-Ro ramp on the north bank of the river.

The Operations Centre

The Operations Centre was our next stop.

Here the 17000 annual ship movements are managed, supported by a state of the art Vessel Traffic Management system.

From the control room we had a good view on the port operations in action:

The building was inaugurated in 2007 and part financed by the European Union.

Hanging out with the pilots

This is at the same time also the pilot station. We got on board of one them and went out to pick up the pilot from a container feeder ship that was just leaving the port on its way to Southampton.

Inside it has five seats: One for the helmsman and four for pilots or passengers like us, equipped with suspension and a high back to provide safe seating also in rough weather. With this boat doing up to 26 knots such a ride can be very rocky. Sometimes the weather conditions are so rough that the pilot boat can not go out to collect the pilot. Then the pilot has to sail with the ship he was piloting to its next port of call.

The helmsman has all the modern navigational equipment available, like an Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS), Radar, but also a compass which is independent from electricity.

Luckily the weather was calm. So it was no problem to approach the ship very closely and we sailed parallel to it until the helmsman made contact between the ships.

Link: sevenload.com

Now the pilot could step over safely and was safely held by his colleague on the foredeck of the
pilot boat. Then we went back to the Operations Centre to bring the pilot ashore. This whole process took about 20 minutes.

Here you can see our small excursion group:

From left to right: Mick Sheehan, Deirdre Doyle, Sylwia Owczarczak and myself, next to the Operations Centre at the statue of the "The Mariner".

The training centre

After that we went to the training centre, where all Mick, Deirdre and Sylwia work. In the training centre softskills are developed like team working & interpersonal skills, communication but also the English language because there are a lot of foreigners working in the port like everywhere in Ireland. Among the hard skills are computer software and handling of dangerous goods. Handling skills like driving a crane are taught on-site.

The training is where one of the main interests of the Port of Dublin lies in the EFFORTS project.

After we had discussed all issues we finally went to the old warehouse district of Dublin which has been turned into an office area. We went to a pub which used to be Mick`s office when he worked at a wine and spirits warehouse. That was a lovely ending for a very interesting day with charming people. After a couple of pints of beer we had to go to the ferry terminal because my ship was scheduled to sail at 22:00 which it didn´t, but that is another story.

Labels: The ports visited