From the start, innovation has sat at the heart of NASH Maritime’s business. You don’t have a choice if you’re working on complex maritime schemes in challenging marine environments. Innovative thinking comes with the territory.
We’ve found that highly effective innovation rests on four principles:
1. Stay curious
Whilst we’re the experts in our domain – maritime safety and navigational risk management – we recognise that our clients are the ones that know their issues and needs.
By listening well and asking the right questions, we can quickly get to the heart of the matter which means our solutions are, naturally, fit for purpose.
Example DigiSMS
Spending time with those responsible for port marine safety, we regularly hear that in-house safety management systems are often held in disparate applications which makes maintaining such systems a full-time job.
By asking more about the issues and what they’d prefer, we uncovered what was missing. We then developed a simple, efficient and effective online marine safety management system that reduces the maintenance and management burden by bringing everything together into a single, integrated tool.
Hosting everything in a single place means it is quick and easy to find what’s needed, streamlining document management.
Providing an integrated calendar ensures that those responsible know what task is due when and provides an overview of what’s been done.
Initiating, assigning and tracking actions makes management simple and efficient. And compliance is easily demonstrated as all activity is logged and traceable across the system.
Uncovering what matters and what creates difficulties meant we could create a product that met the needs of the market.
2. Don’t re-invent the wheel
There is often no need to invent something entirely new, solutions in one sector can often be transferred to another.
Thanks to the varied knowledge, expertise and experience of our people, learnings from elsewhere are often found to solve issues in another.
Example ACUA Ocean
This is exactly what we’ve done in preparing the navigation risk assessments for ACUA Ocean who have built the world’s first hydrogen powered uncrewed surface vessel.
With funding from DfT, their Clean Maritime Demonstration project is trialling operability within the confines of Plymouth harbour and the open waters beyond, as well as demonstrating refuelling on the east coast of Scotland.
For the harbour authorities concerned, we’ve prepared location specific qualitative formal safety assessments when operating in their jurisdiction.
However, borrowing from the oil and gas sector, we have developed operational domain parameters that might be applied to any passage plan in open waters. Taking a quantitative marine risk model approach makes risk assessments for new technologies such as this, consistent, comparable and efficient. If approved for use, such an approach will enable ACUA Ocean to continue to trial its new technology anywhere in the UK.
3. Believe in better
We pride ourselves on offering practical advice that combines data-science technology with maritime experience. A key part of this is the raw data we use to underpin our recommendations.
Example AI Image recognition platform
Understanding how a waterway, stretch of coastline or offshore area is used is fundamental to managing risk and safeguarding navigation.
Whilst vessels over 300gt are required to carry AIS and are thus easy to place, to get a complete picture of how a particular area and its environs are used we need to supplement it with additional datasets that take account of other sea users.
For offshore wind developments we commission vessel traffic surveys that collect radar track data and vessel transponder data (AIS), whilst observers log recreational and fishing vessel activity. Such surveys are a key phase in developing our baseline understanding of how the proposed development area is used.
In waterways, up until now, because there was no easy way to collect and analyse recreational craft movements, we followed a similar protocol – undertaking location specific surveys with observers.
We had previously developed an AI-image recognition platform but thanks to a grant from Innovate UK we were able to partner with Brunel University and upgrade the system so that it now recognises 20 different types of recreational watercraft.
The newly trained and adapted system processes and identifies recreational users in real-time making understanding waterway use more efficient and less costly.
4. Collaborate
Many organisations including NASH Maritime recognise the value of collaborating with colleagues. But at NASH Maritime, we go further.
Whilst we’re the subject matter specialists in our domain, we recognise that our clients are the experts on their issues and others have skills we don’t. We regularly put together diverse teams to supercharge our innovation, problem solving and solution development.
Example: Port VTS Middle East
A client required support in the design and specification for a new vessel traffic system in a major Middle East port.
Key requirements included the need to integrate the new system with the other services and facilities provided within a new port control tower; to provide a state-of-the-art solution with full coverage of the port and its approaches; provide full redundancy to ensure continuous operation and; to provide data links to other locations where relevant information was to be available outside the new control tower.
To consider how to best meet these requirements we brought in mariners, structural engineers, VTS system designers and management experts to collaborate with our in-house technology team.
Bringing people with different experiences and backgrounds together stimulated everyone’s creativity, leading to faster problem-solving.
At NASH Maritime, we’ve found these four principles will unlock any problem a client presents.
If you have an issue that is yet to be resolved, get in touch today. Together, we will find the answer.
