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Burke says that he has always been a champion of doing the right maintenance at the right time. “It’s more important to take care of the ships we have because we’re going to have them for a long, long time. There’s a big cost in buying those ships and a large cost in owning them. If you want them to get to their expected life, you need to take care of them. And what we found in the navy is that 75 percent of what you spend on a ship, you need to spend whether you put it to sleep or not. You don’t have to do too much maintenance, but you have to do it at the right time.” Beyond the technology that is certainly coming, you get the distinct impress that Burke will monitor that situa- tion closely, as well.

From a safety perspective, Burke says that the greater Car- nival brand and its many fl eets do have a good record. To that end, he says, “We’re working hard to improve it. People as- sume that ships are going to be safe – that’s a fair assumption.

My goal in the near term would be to have (as much) installa- tion complete on the fi re prevention, suppression and detection equipment as we possibly can across the fl eet.”

Smart Thinking, Global Savvy

For Carnival and Bill Burke, the gleaming outward appear- ance of their collective, international fl eets is meaningless without the back offi ce resolve to commit every possible re- source towards the safest, most effi cient organization possible.

At the heart of all of that, perhaps, is CSMART, the Center for Simulator Maritime Training, a facility located in Almere,

Netherlands. A service mark of Carnival plc, CSMART oper- ates as the Dutch branch of Carnival plc, which is part of the

Carnival Corporation & plc group. There, the journey to the best possible Carnival Corporation has already begun. Burke says, “We’ve just made the decision to go to annual reoccurring training, which will require us to expand our facility.” When that happens, says Burke, every single offi cer in the fl eet will see simulation training, every year, preparing for every possible outcome at sea.

Training should, according to Burke, go far beyond simple simulation exercises. “One size does not fi t all. There’s a great opportunity for the ‘commodore chief’ to train those folks and recognize the differences. My time spent in Singapore was also quite valuable in that I participated in quite a few exercises with people from many nationalities that exposed me to different cultures that I worked with. That helps me a great deal with my work here at Carnival where, to a large extent, there many cultures because we are a large, multi-national corporation. We operate different lines, all over the world.”

The multi-cultural, multi-faceted and diverse fl eets of the

Carnival Corporation now have a multi-talented, globally sav- vy and pressure-tested Chief Maritime Offi cer. By doing so,

Carnival has redefi ned the business model of the modern cruise industry. What comes next might just surprise you. But as you get to know William Burke, it shouldn’t.

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