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RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

It’s known as one of the ‘Trinity’ – pay, rotation and internet connec- tivity. We are recruiting for the oil majors and major shipping com- panies, and we simply wouldn’t be able to attract the top talent without offering new ships with good communications on board.

– Mark Charman, Chief Executive

Of? cer of recruiter Faststream

Companies already heavily invested in connectivity will handle on, their communications network. A downward keep those systems intact but probably hold off on expand- trend in connectivity equipment and delivery costs and sys- ing bandwidth or upgrading the current system, says Glad- tem size combined with an uptick in subscription service of- ney Darroh, president and CEO of Piper-Morgan Associates ferings and an expansion in functionality is rede? ning ship-

Personnel. “In today’s market, do you continue to gold plate board operations. something? Maybe silver-plating works just ? ne.” It certainly puts a halt to looking into the latest equipment, agrees Ledet, Operational Efficiency Drives Boats noting that Seacor has made no changes to its existing service Management used to just blindly throw more bandwidth levels, which are provided free of charge to crew. (i.e. money) at problems; not any more. In addition to divvy-

Economic pressures are also forcing companies ing up bandwidth between crew and operational apps, with to both squeeze more use out of, management tools like Bluetide Communications’ Access and get a better Management Portal (AMP) application for wireless net- work management, it’s possible to monitor, from any lo- cation or device, network usage and change bandwidth allocations, divert traf? c or incoming data dumps to unused channels, or even shut off access, in real- time, at the push of a button. Users can run the application or trust Bluetide to monitor net- work usage and make requested changes, like Jackson Offshore does. “It lets me focus on other priorities,” says Trent

Zimmer, Jackson Offshore’s IT

Manager.

Jackson’s eight vessels access a 1024X512 bandwidth pipe via

AMP provides users with a “fuel gauge” for band- width, enabling them to see how much bandwidth is avail- able, how much is being used, by whom, where and for what.

Credit: Bluetide 38 | Maritime Professional | 1Q 2016 34-49 Q1 MP2016.indd 38 2/29/2016 11:12:27 AM