6. When I stay somewhere new, I have anti-bacterial wipes so that I can clean everything. Things have improved since the start of the pandemic and hotels now feel a lot safer but it’s about being prepared.
7. Don’t undersell your services at these times. These are risky times so make sure that the reward justifies the risk.
8. This is probably going to be around until next summer or longer, so we have to adapt to stay in business, but our safety and the safety of our families is more important.
Above all stay safe.
workers - especially surveyors - were mandated to wear face masks and use hand sanitizers regularly for personal protection. There are no recorded infections of COVID-19 from port workers. including marine surveyors. to my knowledge.
Our experience here was a mixture of ups and down in marine surveying business. The only means of communicating with our clients is by online and sometimes that is hindered by poor internet facility in the country. New jobs and instructions for the West African ports were affected adversely due to inherent higher costs.
Impact and effect of COVID-19 in Nigeria by M C Ogadina, MIIMS, Regional Director Dir West Africa.
In Nigeria, the impact of the corona virus pandemic on marine surveying activities is the same as any other part of the world. The need to stay safe, obey the health regulators’ guidelines, and the impact of working from home. Everyone seems to be a suspect. The government of Nigeria permitted and considered the port workers, including marine surveyors, as ‘essential service’ providers. Marine and port workers were allowed to move freely during the period of lock down.
The ships coming to the port were monitored by the Port Health Authorities to ensure that any vessel coming into the terminals is quarantined for a minimum of 14 days - the crew’s health status verified before proceeding to load or discharge her cargo. The port
Prior to COVID-19, business meetings were conducted by physical contact and interactions with our clients. That has changed now. The use of online meetings and less physical contacts is the new order. We now rely on the use of our unreliable
internet facility with high cost and poor connectivity.
As far as safety measures are concerned, we have adopted the use of PPE and other safety measures as demanded by the health authorities. The wearing of face masks, use of alcohol based sanitizers and social distances are compulsory in Nigeria. Everyone is trying to comply with the health regulators’ guidelines, but social distancing is difficult when dealing with cargo loading and unloading from the vessel holds.
My opinion for the next 12 months will be SAFETY FIRST always for all. I recommend IIMS members to rely on other Institute members as correspondents in their locality. During this period, for example, I was able to assign two instructions to IIMS members in India, and the services were perfectly carried out by them. That to me should be the spirit of cooperation among us who are on the IIMS platform.
46 | The Report • December 2020 • Issue 94
A touch of COVID by Lee Warltier, Sterling Global Marine Ltd
We are lucky with our business setup as we are divided between the yachting, cargo and commercial sectors with a young team that can adapt quickly.
March saw a sharp drop in yachting appointments specifically pre- purchase, condition surveys and compliance work. The lockdown saw the closure of most European manufacturers and our new build and pre-delivery survey work halted overnight. We furloughed everyone though reversed this decision after just one week as our other work continued and even accelerated. Anything yachty stalled though we continued to operate without a drop in pace, luckier than most!
It has been hard as we are not ‘key workers’ so had limited access to testing. Now our team undergo regular (private) testing at our cost. To date they’ve all been negative but we have contingencies in place should someone have to lock themselves away. The office has mostly been abandoned with everyone working from home and pool cars switched to company cars to prevent multiple users. We issued new risk assessments for all our work and indulged in the PPE requirements of the individual sites. It’s an administration nightmare.
We’ve had to approach clients and commercial vessels differently; most are reluctant to allow us on board hence the testing. The superyachts have strict processes in place. Whilst the rules do not seem to be relaxing the pressure is easing as most people adapt. The next 12 months will be hard work, not so much finding the work just managing it and travelling is not as fun as it used to be!
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