The President’s Column Dear Member
My week started really well. Attending an Australian Maritime Safety Authority surveyors’ workshop I discovered that an IT system they have worked on for about the last four years was going to impose an extra $63,000.00 (best estimate) of costs on my business year on year. Extrapolate this across the group of surveyors I work with (about 250 accredited persons in Australia including many IIMS members) and this is an extra $1.26Million per year of costs directly to surveyors.
This is on top of the survey fees we have to charge - a cost to industry which was not included in the recent ‘consultation’ they did; a consultation which quite rightly got roundly panned by industry and forced a delay in the system until July of next year. AMSA did not mention survey fees then, only that it needed c.$23 Mil to run its own bureaucracy, which was to be extracted from vessel owners and operators. More bureaucracy is just what the world needs right now. Don’t even start me on the
opportunity cost this imposes on me and the 250 surveyors nationally.
This awesome IT system would require us to fully populate a vessel record for an existing vessel, as apparently AMSA is unable to extract this information from current records they hold. Then every survey we conduct will have to be entered into a manual, on-line interface, much of which would then be manually checked by someone somewhere before survey certificates could be issued for vessels we have surveyed. In addition, we would have to upload a raft of horrendous forms… I had to look at my watch and double check the year we are in, because I was having flashbacks to the 1970’s.
When we pointed out (as we had back in March) that we run a centralised QMS/administrative support system and that the system they had built did not allow anyone other than individuals to log in, we were told to work round it by sharing log in’s and passwords, but just not to tell them about it. At this point my jaw hit the ground as you can well imagine.
AMSA is a government agency. I cannot imagine that an Australian government committed to red tape reduction and IT innovation would be best pleased with this approach by one of their agencies.
So, on top of running a business that in the last year did upwards of 1000 surveys, and personally actively surveying, (12 vessels this week as I have staff away), I’m forced into the fray to get the attention of the powers that be, the media and all other stakeholders and try and get this train wreck of a service delivery model properly configured.
In life you have a choice - to be a bystander or to be an upstander. As your President I could not be anything other than the latter.
Who says surveying is a boring job? Have a great holiday period everyone.
Mr Adam Brancher President International Institute of Marine Surveying Email:
adambrancher@kedge.com.au
The Report • December 2017 • Issue 82 | 5
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