New harbour management system speeds up Tauranga

By Adam Gifford

Port of Tauranga is reaping the rewards of a PC-based Harbour Management System (HMS) built in Jade by Cardinal Group's specialist ports team.

The system, which runs on a Windows NT operating system, gives the port company's pilots and customer service staff a graphical view of Tauranga harbour.

"It replaces a great big white board, where the ship positions were drawn in felt tip pen," said IT and finance manager Steven Gray.

"Now if someone wants to work out if a ship should be moved to another berth to prevent congestion, they just click the cursor. It has made allocation of berths a lot easier."

It also means the port is better able to advise ships when to come into the tidal harbour, meaning less time wasted waiting out at sea.

Mr Gray said one of the main drivers for the project, which cost "about $200,000", was to enable the non-marine staff in the 24-hour customer service centre to answer complex questions about tides and ship movements.

"The most frequent question we get is: `If my ship misses this tide, when will it next leave?'

"Using the HMS system, customer service staff can answer questions like this immediately, instead of passing them on to the very busy pilots, who had to provide this service in the past," he said.

The system uses an algorithm developed by Dr Ross Vennell of Otago University's department of marine science, to accurately calculate the tides that affect access to Tauranga.

Chief executive Jon Mayson said as New Zealand's largest export port company, Port of Tauranga believed state-of-the-art software could bring real improvements in customer service.

"An objective of the company is to use electronic commerce to advance our competitive position," Mr Mayson said.

Mr Gray said port staff are meeting with Cardinal this week to discuss the integrating the HMS system into the invoicing system and extending it to allow shipping agents to access it through the internet.

"Jade makes all that web stuff so easy," he said.

Cardinal transportation and travel unit manager Alison Hitchcock said the port company's approach was a big reason for the success of the project.

Cardinal started working with Port of Tauranga in August to write a business requirements definition, designed the system in September and developed and implemented it by late February.

"There was a huge commitment from management to build the system. If you don't have that commitment from they client, there's a huge risk of not delivering what they want," she said.

"What they did, which is not always what happens, is they took people from their organisation who knew the business and put them into the project.

"We had a pilot, people from IT and finance and a technologist on the project.

"Industry needs to learn that's how projects succeed. It's a Cardinal philosophy, but often clients don't have the resources."

Jade is a software programming technology for building large business systems, particularly in the electronic commerce area, developed by Christchurch-headquartered Cardinal Group.