The intermodal rail course of the Escola Europea is coming to Madrid

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Fully committed to including rail in the intermodal transport chain, the Escola Europea, in collaboration with Puertos del Estado and other companies from the railway sector, are taking the SURCO Operations II training course to the Spanish capital.

The intermodal rail SURCO courses – Simple Use of Railway Connections – delve deeper into intermodal rail operations within ports and rail terminals, and focus on the characteristics and advantages of this type of transport.

This edition of the SURCO training, which will take place in the Spanish capital from 23 to 31 January 2023, is designed for professionals from public administration and private companies who are looking for an in-depth knowledge of the infrastructure and intermodal equipment, as well as the management processes that enable rail transport to be used as part of the intermodal chain.

This training, organised and created by the Escola Europea with the collaboration of Puertos del Estado, the Port Authority of Barcelona, Renfe, ADIF, Viia, Puerto Seco de Madrid, SLISA, Suardiz Rail, In-Move de Railgroup, among other companies from the railway sector, seeks formulas so that professionals from companies and administrations can obtain a practical and real vision of railway intermodal operations.

Through theoretical classes, participants will be invited to solve a case study that is based on real operational scenarios. In addition to the theoretical classes and the case study, people will be able to witness intermodal operations first-hand during visits to the Coslada intermodal terminal and the Azuqueca de Henares terminal, as well as a visit to ADIF’s CRC / H24 in Atocha.

The theoretical classes will focus mainly on the management of railway systems, the European TEN-T, the impact of rail transport on the environment, international rail transport and procurement, and the analysis of the costs of rail transport chains.

This training complies with the aims set by the European Union to increase motorways and rail traffic in general, as an incentive to promote sustainable mobility in the region. It is also complimentary to the plans of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda to try to boost rail freight traffic in Spain by taking advantage of the so-called ‘eco-incentives’.

It is in this context that knowledge of the different aspects surrounding rail freight transport is not only beneficial to professionals, but indispensable to companies involved in freight transport. This is where the offer of local and international training courses, such as SURCO Madrid, takes on special importance.

For more information, you can head to the course page:  SURCO Madrid 

The European TECHLOG project presents its ‘Living Labs’

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This month, the EU-funded TECHLOG project gathers steam in events across the Mediterranean. In Spain, representatives of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport presented the project to participants of the international Smart Ports conference, which took place in the framework of the Smart City Expo World Congress 2022. At the same time in Tunis, TECHLOG will launch the 2nd Mediterranean Living Lab to support the transfer of innovative solutions for advanced (trans)port training.

On the morning of the 17th of November, Orlando Reveco from the Escola Europea took the stand to introduce the TECHLOG project to conference attendees. Having provided a summary of the project objectives and goals, Mr. Reveco then delve into the specifics of Port Virtual Lab – a virtual port community that hosts an array of online simulators used in the training of port community professionals and young people seeking to enter the industry.

Across the Mediterranean Sea, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Sfax, Tunis, partner of the project, is organising and hosting the launch event of the West Living Lab which will enable technology transfers for logistics innovation in the Mediterranean area. The event will take place on the 23rd of November 2022 in Sfax, Tunisia.

The aim of the “Living Lab” is to stimulate innovation by transferring research from laboratories to real-life settings where users are invited to cooperate with researchers and developers to contribute to the overall innovation process. The event will mark the signing of collaboration agreements on innovation and training between the partners.

TECHLOG (Technological Transfer for Logistics Innovation in Mediterranean area) is aimed at strengthening the links between research and industry in the trans(port) sector by creating a permanent EU-MED cross-border space where research organisations and (trans)port industry can co-develop, test and share new Technology Transfer Initiatives based on advanced simulation technologies.

TECHLOG is a 30-month EU co-funded project with a total budget of EUR 3.4 million, of which EUR 3.1 million (90%) is provided under the ENI CBC Med Programme.

The project partners are the University of Cagliari in Italy (main beneficiary), the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Crafts and Agriculture of Maremma and Tirino (Italy), the Arab Academy of Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (Egypt), the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport (Spain), and the Federation of Egyptian European Business Associations (Egypt), the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture of Beirut and Mount Lebanon (Lebanon), the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Sfax (Tunisia), and the University of Sfax (Tunisia).

The consortium consists of members from Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon who will participate in the TECHLOG project meetings together with the EU Delegation in Tunisia, the Ministry of Transport and important Tunisian stakeholders from ports, land transport and logistics, research and innovation laboratories and training institutions.

2022 sees a record number of students pass through the Escola’s doors as it bounces back up from the pandemic

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On Wednesday, the 16th of November the Executive Committee Meeting of the Escola Europea was held. The meeting was chaired by Eduard Rodés. Mario Massarotti representing Grimaldi Group, Antonio Pedevila representing GNV, Silvio Ferrando representing Ports of Genoa, Catalina Grimalt representing the Port of Barcelona and Luca Lupi representing Porti di Roma were in attendance.

The meeting dealt with issues related to the evolution of the Escola’s activities, new initiatives such as Forma’t al Port TALENT, the development of the Port Virtual Lab platform and the organisation’s participation in the Port of Barcelona’s trade mission to Thailand.

The increase in the number of students and new training centres that have joined the Formati al Porto programmes organised by the centre in Italy was also highlighted.

A record number of participants attended logistics and transport workshops throughout the year, with a total of 3,380 participants, three times more than expected. This was in addition to the 2,111 students who attended the technical courses. In total, 5,497 people passed through the Escola’s classrooms in 2022.

During the meeting, the ARETE EXCELLENCE distinction was presented to Luca Lupi, who is leaving the board of the Escola after his appointment as director of the Port of Palermo. Eduard Rodés, on behalf of the Executive Board, thanked him for his involvement and dedication during all these years, wishing him good luck and a lot of success in the new stage of his professional development.

In the photo (from left to right): Catalina Grimalt, Luca Lupi, Eduard Rodés and Concha Palacios. Silvio Ferrando, Antonio Pedevila and Mario Massarotti joined the meeting remotely.

The President of the Port of Civitavecchia has appointed Ms Marta Coppola to represent the Port Authority.

Inauguracion de la primera edición del curso Forma't al Port - Talent

The first edition of the Forma’t al Port – TALENT begins

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A high performance programme for specialised training in the transport, logistics and port sector

On Thursday the 3rd of November the opening ceremony of the first edition of the Forma’t al Port Talent programme took place at the premisses of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport. The course is a high-performance training in which participants have had to pass assessment tests and professional interviews before being selected to participate. During the training, candidates will be able to see elements that make up a logistics-port community first-hand. They will also obtain a detailed report on their professional profile at the end of the course which will allow them to be a part of a specialised recruitment database for the companies participating in this training.

With this initiative, the Escola Europea, together with the Port of Barcelona, Barcelona City Council, Barcelona Provincial Council, the Zona Franca and the companies sponsoring the Forma’t al Port programme in its TALENT edition, seeks to solve one of the most significant problems in the sector identified within the framework of the Training and Employment working group of the Port of Barcelona Governing Council: the lack of qualified talent.

The opening ceremony was attended by Eduard Rodés, the director of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport; Agustín Oleaga, non-executive president of DHL Supply Chain Iberia, who shared his experience with the students, giving them advice and recommendations to continue their professional career. In addition, Catalina Grimalt, the deputy director general of the Port of Barcelona gave a speech in English, the language in which the training will take place, encouraging the participants and explaining the role that the Escola Europea has played in the development of qualified professionals in the sector.

Grimalt highlighted the long trajectory that Escola Europea has travelled in technical and specialised training: “For 15 years, like the sector, Escola Europea has constantly evolved, like an organism that follows the Darwinian laws of the survival of the fittest. It has grown, spread its influence along the Mediterranean and Atlantic shores and strengthened its relations with international training centres”.

The training will take place in the Barcelona port area and at sea during a SSS route between Barcelona and Civitavecchia. In addition to technical training, trainees will have the opportunity to develop transversal skills such as teamwork, communication and organisation. This will enable them to learn the technical vocabulary of the sector and to function in an international port environment.

The creation of this programme has been possible thanks to the collaboration between public entities, private companies and the academic sector. As a result, the sponsoring companies will have access to a pool of qualified talent, facilitating recruitment processes and giving access to the most qualified young people in the sector within the region. This will ultimately facilitate a solution to the recruitment processes of highly qualified personnel within the sector.

To this end, the Escola continues to collaborate with public and private entities. Professionals of all levels of experience contribute to the design and implementation of all of its courses, so that what students are taught reflects the reality of the sector.

The Escola Europea as a model for training in the logistics and ports industry in Thailand

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On the 25th of October the Escola Europea, together with the Port of Barcelona and the Barcelona port community, signed a collaboration agreement in the framework of the Commercial and Trade Mission of the Port of Barcelona to Thailand. The agreement aimed to build and strengthen relationship with this country.

The document focused on training within the industry between the two port communities and was signed by Santiago Garcia-Milà, the Deputy Director General of Strategy and Development of the Port of Barcelona; Emili Sanz, Vice President of FETEIA-OLTRA; Marta Miquel, Chief Business Officer of the Escola Europea Intermodal-Transport; and Witoon Santibunyarat, President of the Thai International Freight Forwarders Association (TIFFA).

Among other things, the document highlighted the intentions and needs of the industry in both ports and recognised the need to build better trained, qualified, and digitalised port communities to improve the commercial relationship between Spain and Thailand, and make transactions more efficient. All of this was supported by the signatories, namely the Port of Barcelona, the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport, the Spanish Freight Forwarders Federation (Federación Española de Transitaris – FETEIA in Spanish) and TIFFA.

Trade mission in Thailand 2022

The meeting with the Thai International Freight Forwarders Association (TIFFA) was accompanied by a working session entitled “Logistics training”. The session organised as part of the port’s trade mission to Thailand together with associations of consignees, customs agents and forwarding agents from both Barcelona and Bangkok. This event helped configure the training programmes that make up the Barcelona port community, and therewith position itself as a model of reference for the port-logistics fabric of Thailand.

In practical terms, the agreement reached envisioned the promotion of joint activities in the field of training and the implementation of a pilot training course in international trade operations, which will focus on trade transactions between Thailand, Europe and Mediterranean countries. Based on the results of this pilot course and the parties’ interest in further developing the relationship, the establishment of a stable collaboration framework for the development of joint courses will be considered, as well as the exchange of students in the frameworks of international projects. As part of this commitment to training Port Virtual Lab was introduced – a simulation tool for a cluster of companies and entities that make up a virtual port community, and that is able to simulate real operations.

Digitalization of operations is a necessity in today’s industries and that is why the Escola Europea has developed this innovative training platform. Both professionals and students of higher education institutions and can experience firsthand activities related to international trade, all the while interacting with our simulated companies. This way, Port Virtual Lab  provides the practitioner with an experiential learning environment from a distance, one in which users are immersed in a creative social space that allows them to design and experience their own training and innovation.

If you would like to know more about the trade mission, or are curious about the new platform, you can check out the platform website (https://www.portvirtuallab.com) or contact us (international@escolaeuropea.eu).

Escola Europea heads to Beirut to support the transfer of innovative solutions for advanced (trans)port training

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In the framework of the 3rd TECHLOG Steering Committee meeting that took place in Beirut, Lebanon on 18 & 19 October 2022, the Chamber of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, partner in the project, organized the launch event of the Eastern Living Lab pertaining to the technological transfer for logistics innovation in Mediterranean area for (trans)port training. The launch event and Steering Committee meetings took place in Beirut, with TECHLOG consortium partners from Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon as well as Lebanese stakeholders from port, logistics, innovation labs and academic institutions in attendance. The project works towards the modernisation and optimisation of trans(port) for supply chains through the development of innovative tools for the technology transfers within port industries.

Mr. Rabih Sabra, Director General of Beirut Chamber welcomed the partners and participants form Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon and shed lights on the Chamber’s leading role in ENI CBC MED projects for y(tranears. He emphasized the relevance of TECHLOG since it will not only enhance the partnership between Northern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean Basin but will also give Lebanon and the port and transport community of Beirut an opportunity to upscale its workforce skills and to benefit from the technology transfer through the new living labs network. Speakers included Mrs. Alessia Squarcella, Deputy Head of Cooperation from the EU Delegation in Lebanon, Dr. Kassem Rahhal, Advisor to the Minister of Public Works and Transport, Professors, Gianfranco Fancello & Patrizia Serra,  from University of Cagliari , the Lead Beneficiary of the TECHLOG project, and Dr. Sandra Haddad, Vice Dean at Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport  (AASTMT).

Mrs. Hana Nehme, Head of Development projects at Beirut Chamber opened the axes of discussions between the Lebanese stakeholders and the project partners on innovation challenges and needs, alignment of academic approach, and opportunities offered by the TECHLOG project.  The Lebanese stakeholders who attended the event, namely, Compagnie Maritime d’Affrètement (CMA) and Compagnie Générale Maritime (CGM), International Navigation Chamber, the American University of Beirut, ESA business School, and American University of Technology.

“It is amazing to be able to see the hard work that our partners have done over the past year in person” stated Concha Palacios – Chief Project Officer at the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport. “The innovative Living Labs and simulators now under development will be indispensable in the growth of supply chains across the Mediterranean, and central in the creation of training offers available to professionals and students alike. Moreover, through such collaborative team work with partners from all shores of the Mediterranean, we can develop real-life, virtual and simulation tools that can be used for training in all markets of the region.”

Members of the Escola Europea met with fellow partners from CEEBA – lead partner in the ENI CBC Med financed TechLog project

The Escola Europea is in the process of launching its own Living Lab – the Port Virtual Lab (PVL) – which is a comprehensive technological and educational development tool set up as a virtual port community. Within it, international transport and logistics students, and professionals can simulate real-life operations and have access to a variety of innovative tools that will help them develop and perfect their knowledge. Certain modules and simulators of the PVL are developed in the framework of the TechLog project.

For more information, you can contact the Escola at international@escolaeuropea.eu.

TECHLOG (Technological Transfer for Logistics Innovation in Mediterranean area) duration is and EU co-financed project of 30 months with a total budget of €3.4 million, of which €3.1 million (90%) is funded by the European Union. The project partners are the University of Cagliari of  Italy (Lead beneficiary), the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Crafts and Agriculture of Maremma and Tirino (Italy), the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (Egypt), the European School of Short Shipping, EEIG (Spain), and the Federation of Egyptian European Business Associations (Egypt) ), the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture of Beirut and Mount Lebanon (Lebanon), the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Sfax (Tunisia), and Sfax University (Tunisia). 

Participants del curso SURCO Aragón, octubre 2022

Aragon commits to intermodality in rail transport through SURCO

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The SURCO Aragón training, promoted by the Escola Europea and ALIA – Clúster Logístico de Aragón, focused on collaborative dynamics and the optimisation of national and international railway operations.

The SURCO – Simple Use of Railway Connections – courses delve into intermodal rail operations within ports and rail terminals, focusing on rail’s characteristics and advantages. In this edition of the course, held from 26 September to 4 October 2022 between Zaragoza, Barcelona and Perpignan, professionals from different parts of the Aragonese and Barcelona region came together to share the fundamental elements of rail logistics and apply them to reality through visits to operators and through the resolution of a practical case study. The training was organised and created in alliance with ALIA – the logistics cluster based in Zaragoza – and with the support of companies such as ViiA, the Zaragoza Maritime Terminal, the Port of Barcelona, Renfe, SLISA, Aragón Plataforma Logística, ADIF and the terminals of Ambrogio, Morrot and APM Terminals.

The training complies with the aims set by the European Union to increase the use of rail motorways and rail traffic in general as an incentive to promote sustainable mobility in the region. It is in this context that knowledge of the different aspects surrounding rail freight transport is not only beneficial for students and professionals but indispensable for companies involved in freight transport. This is where the offer of training courses that focus on local and international aspects, as SURCO Aragón did, take on special significance.

In this edition, 23 professionals from different freight transport companies, freight forwarders and import and export companies from Aragon, alongside others interested in the use of rail transport, were able to understand and subsequently apply the different elements necessary to offer efficient solutions by the inclusion of rail in the multimodal chain.

Theoretical classes focused on the management of railway systems, the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), the impact of rail transport on the environment, procurement and international rail transport, and cost analysis of rail transport chains.

To apply the theoretical concepts, the course incorporated several visits to the railway infrastructures on the border between Spain and France: ViiA’s Le Boulou railway lorry terminal, the Zaragoza Maritime Terminal, the PLAZA intermodal terminal (ADIF), the Ambrogio intermodal terminal, the Morrot railway terminal, the ADIF traffic control centre in Zaragoza and the APM Terminals container terminal.

In addition to the visits and classes, participants worked on a practical case study in groups, which allowed them to put into practice everything they had learned.

For more information about the course, you can head to: SURCO Aragon 2022 – Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport.

Barcelona Port’s Training and Employment Working Group encourages training for road transport

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New studies must help companies recruit people trained in the fields of driving and road transport management.

On the 29th of September, in the framework of the Working Group on ‘Training and Employment’ of the Port Authority of Barcelona, an information day has been held regarding the new courses that have launched during the current academic year 2022-23 at the Institute of Logistics of Barcelona and the Institute of the Virgin of the Mercè, as part of the Consortium of Education of Barcelona.

These new studies must help companies recruit people trained in the fields of driving and road transport management.

The road transport sector, through ATEC and SINTRAPORT – the sectoral associations in Barcelona – has identified a lack of specific professional profiles for the development of the economic activity of transport companies. The sector is suffering from the ageing of its workers, especially those engaged in driving, and has detected the lack of profiles as urgent as that of traffic bottlenecks.

In order to combat this situation and attract talent among transport companies in Barcelona, the Barcelona Education Consortium has launched a comprehensive strategy to respond to the situation:

  • The introduction of a new professional training cycle on driving vehicles, to train future lorry drivers.
  • The creation of an integral training center in logistics: the Barcelona Logistics Institute, to prepare courses based on transport management profiles.

It has been noted that throughout 2021 approximately 1000 new vocational training jobs were created from the 11,000 existing ones, and to which 20,000 applications were received. This is in addition to the high employability of students finishing the Dual Training programmes which showed a 70-80% recruitment rate in the first year of completion of the studies, in fields directly related to the studies completed.

In the light of these initiatives, the ‘Training and Employment’ Working Group of the Port of Barcelona Governing Council has organised a day to share the strategy and formative offer initiated by this academic course with the transport community, with the aim of creating synergies between companies and training centres through training projects, dual FP practices and demand-fitting talent recruitment.

During the event Eduard Rodés, the chairman of the Working Group and director of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport, expressed the needs of the sector. He was accompanied by Oscar González, the president of ATEC and Jorge Fernández, the president of SINTRAPORT,.

In response, Josep Ramon Domingo, from the Directorate of Post-Compulsory and Special Regime Education of the Barcelona Consortium, Alex Salinas, the deputy director of the Institute of the Virgin of the Mercè and Mercedes García, teacher and head of studies at the ILB have explained the strategy, content and ways of close collaboration between centers and companies.

Finally, Francesc Bonada, Head of Organization and Sustainability of the Port of Barcelona and Eduard Rodés, have closed the event by recalling the importance of collaboration with the business fabric to know the occupational needs and be able to adapt the training cycles to the current trends of the business community.

SDG Airlines

We fly!

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The Escola takes to the air!

SDG Airlines

Eduard Rodés - Director of the Escola Europea Intermodal Transport

Written by: Eduard Rodés, director of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport

Not literally, of course! Traditionally, in our courses, we have always focused on various modalities of transport – excluding air! Air transport was always considered as a costly alternative, and not appropriate for large freight shipments. Over the past two years, however, we have made leaps in virtual education and created new educational and innovation tools based on simulators. Whilst still experiential, the simulators that we now use morphed from the constructivist educational model to a behaviorist one. With this new model, we were also able to add air routes, and so a new air cargo transport company – SDG Airlines – was born: A company full of ambition and born in a logistic-port community in which the air sector plays a fundamental role, and without which it would not be possible to understand the current realities of logistics and transport.

Richard Florida says that human creativity is the last economic resource, and I believe he is quite right. Time has also proven him right. Societies advance by leaps and bounds, and ours has been leaping a lot: COVID, climate change, energy crises, geopolitical crises, are only some of the challenges that have pushed us. Along the way we, as a society, keep trying to move forward relentlessly, and for that it is essential to believe in what we do. We need to think that what we dedicate our time to is important to our society.

In the Escola’s latest leap, pushed perhaps more so with the COVID pandemic, we were forced to develop the a virtual port community – the PortVirtualLab (http://pvl.one). After two years, it has grown to be a very important training tool; one which is already implemented in 7 countries and continues to grow in both scope and performance.

The success of the platform can be assigned to the fact that it allows us to move away from an approach that focuses on the learning of contents to one oriented towards criticism and reasoning, seeking to change the student’s point of view. A different point of view, from within the operations themselves; one that allows the student to take on the role of the protagonist. At the Escola we say that the space we build is an avatar of reality, and what we try to do is to immerse the students in this virtual space. They should think of the simulated companies as real ones – I recommend for you to visit our virtual airline company – SDG Airlines – http://sdgairlines.com– and try to interact with them as you would with any internet entity. At the same time, we make our students work in both close and distant teams to complete the operations. The telematic tools become the means that allow the operations to be carried out. Let’s not forget that the vast majority of people close to us have had the means and have learned to use these tools in the last few months – something that was not necessarily the case at the onset of the pandemic.

The simulated world that we have to create and represent mentally helps us understand and explain the operations.  When we are confronted with a given phenomenon, the content of the mental representations we construct depends on the questions we want to answer. It depends on the needs, interests, and emotions of each individual. In our case, this world is represented by international trade operations that require the design and management of international logistic chains that mainly use maritime and air transport.

The companies that we designed companies could be mistaken for real ones, but they have the added characteristic of incorporating values that aim to meaningfully construct knowledge and train for civic life. We hope that our students are convinced that respect and commitment to the environment, people and society is the best way for everyone and that this should guide any business operations.  Visual perception, comprehension, reasoning and symbolic interpretation (hermeneutics) influence this construction. Students are guided, in turn, by people’s technical and scientific knowledge, by their previous experiences, by the way in which information is processed and by motivational aspects regarding the context in which they are constructed.  Therefore, learning is related to what the student understands, and the student understands only what interests or excites him.

In this construction process, the teacher -or we can call him a mentor- tries to make the student bring to light the knowledge he possesses with his help, which in Socratic thinking would be helping to “give birth” to ideas, but in our environment, this should favor the transformation of culture.

Our PVL platform also fosters personal training and socialization processes as, by its very definition, it is necessary to get to know the people who make up the work teams, as well as the people in the support teams (agents) who are there to help carry out the operations. The participants can engage in a variety of social interactions (such as games that we have not (yet) initiated). This somehow constructs our identity – the one we want to project to others – according to the contexts we encounter in conversations. These conversations allow us to reveal who we are, and that usually brings us satisfaction.

In the part related to cultural change, activities are structured according to certain binding rules regarding what we must do or not do, which will shape the ethical aspects of how we approach and prioritize operations, and what we expect from others.

How to act, how to proceed, and what to expect from others – all are central aspects of our courses. Finally we hope that this process and these activities will lead our students to Areté, to know how to do, and in the manner of the Greeks, to know how to do well (tékhne).

Education becomes a social activity that builds us personally and professionally, and in which practice and communication with others form a process of reciprocal action among participants.

The reality is that we lead students to work together, to get to know each other and to know how to work together. This is difficult to achieve in a normal classroom. We seek to change the space of coexistence traditionally linked to “out of class” activities to a relationship that will allow a collaborative and productive environment that can contribute to the bettering of our society, and therefore to a transformation of the reality that improves it.

In the process of building the platform we have had good teachers, or as Hernán Rodriguez would say, we have had ‘good’ teachers; that is to say, professionals who are not only technically prepared, but also ethically adequate. We therefore propose, as an educational task, the permanent search for excellence (Areté).

We are looking for a type of teacher “who has charisma (gift) and dedication in the art of the Socratic Method: to “illuminate” the best that the student has within himself; allowing the development of the capacities that each one has to transform his life and help transform the lives of others. Here lies the challenge for the teacher. And here is also the challenge for this constructionist proposal”[1].

The courses with pvl.one are a transformative experience for teachers and students, and this has made us fly in the field of education and in the field of intermodal transport.

Now we would like to be able to fly together with teachers, students, and training centers all over the world.

Because we fly!

Sincerely,

Eduard Rodés

Director

Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport

 

[1] Dr. Hernán Rodríguez Villamil – Del constructivismo al construccionismo: implicaciones educativas. Revista Educación y Desarrollo Social Bogotá, D.C., Colombia – Volumen II – No. 1 enero – junio de 2008 – ISSN 2011-5318

Commercial Container Ship

HydroPen: A solution to container fires?

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Ever since man was able to transport goods by sea, hazards and dangers have existed to the cargo involved. Starting from the ancient Greeks, the design and size of ships continued to evolve to match the demand that was growing in an increasingly connected society. In the 20th century sea transport became more even extensive as our society became more globalised and technology more developed.

There is no doubt that cargo transport by sea has drastically evolved over the years. However, as with anything, with larger volumes and varieties of goods carried, more risk emerged. Container fires are unfortunately very common – today they happen on average every 66 days. It is up to industry experts to try to figure out a way to prevent or contain catastrophes – and it looks like the Danish company Viking has come up with a solution that will help shippers mitigate such risks with the HydroPen.

History of container fires

Whenever a large fire breaks out aboard a ship, the cargo on board is determined to be the cause. The contents of containers can shift around, burn, explode or even liquify if proper storage and handling is not carried out.

Following many disasters at sea that caused either massive losses in life or in cargo, the International Maritime Organization came up with regulations to try to prevent or minimise such disasters in 1958. Because of this, a lot of dangerous freight can be tracked. Freightwaves reports that today, 10% of 60 million of maritime containers moved globally are declared as dangerous goods under the IMO regulations. Unfortunately, 1/5th of those are either poorly packed or incorrectly identified – therewith increasing risk of container fires and potential maritime disasters.

Common causes of container fires

There have been quite a few large container fires in recent history. The first step to eliminating such disasters would be for the industry to identify the risks, follow the safety standards, and develop feasible fire prevention and containment technologies.

The most common cause of container fire continues to be misdeclaration of container cargo. This could be assigned to either clerical errors or to nefarious activities, but in both cases can lead to huge destructions of property and a loss of life. Another cause could be improper container storage. In the past, dangerous seas have caused shifts in improperly secured containers aboard ships, which then resulted in fires or explosions. Finally, the third most common cause is improper fire containment, control equipment and staff training. Better fire-fighting equipment on board the ships, with crew that is fully trained in its usage, could help offset the fire risks at sea.

Other common causes of ship fires can be assigned to:

  • Engine malfunction
  • Improper electrical wiring
  • Improper handling of kitchen equipment on board of vessels
  • Mislabelled combustible cargo

Industry solutions

After each catastrophe, industry partners and insurance companies have tried to carry out analyses to determine what the causes were, and thus help prevent similar fiascos in the future. Many insurance companies have already stressed the need to promote better ship designs and fire-fighting equipment to help the crew manage any potential misfortunes (Allianz Global).

New technologies seem to be the answer. Recently, the Nordic company Viking has come up with a new tool – the HydroPen – which has promising potential. This tool is an “innovative, water-based drilling machine that enables crew to effectively and efficiently fight container fires high up in the stack.” It consists of two components – a lift to raise a drill or spray unit to the location of a fire and the unit itself.

How does it work?

In the event of a fire inside a container on board of a ship, the HydroPen can drill through a standard container door or wall. It then can use a special hose, which is connected to the vessel’s fire main. Using pressurised water, it can spray the insides of the container and put out the fire before it can spread beyond the container (causing more damage to other cargo and potentially the vessel itself. With proper training, this tool could potentially prevent large maritime disasters.

For more videos on how the HydroPen works, you can also head to the Viking YouTube channel.
 

Final thoughts

There is no doubt that the shipping industry continues to evolve – with larger distances, larger shipments, and a larger variety of cargo. For the shipping industry to remain safe and efficient, it needs highly trained staff that know how to protect the cargo during the vessel trajectories, employees that know how to properly label cargo, and innovative technological solutions that can help mitigate any potential risks that may arise from circumstances out of our control.

Vessel operations are highly complex. At the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport we offer an array of courses that can help you expand your knowledge of the industry from the perspective of the shipper, the freight forwarder, the port authority and the end client. If you are interested in knowing more, you can check out our available courses or contact us directly for more information.

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