 A very good morning to Mr. John Ridgway, Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer, BP Shipping, Mr. G.S.Sahni, former Director General of Shipping, our esteemed ship owners from Japan , Korea and Europe who have taken time off from their busy schedule to be here today, esteemed guests from DG Shipping, Classification societies, Mr. John Harris, another close friend from BP who in his earlier capacity in BP Shipping was instrumental in discovering ESM to be the third party manager for BP Shipping, our mentor Mr.& Mrs. Kuldip Nayar and many special friends of my wife and I from places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan ,Norway, Korea and various other countries who are here just to share this momentous occasion with us and all other distinguished guests whom I am not naming but each one who are very dear to us and we sincerely appreciate your presence here. We are ever grateful to you all, thank you very much and hope you all have a very comfortable, safe and enjoyable stay in Mumbai and Lonavala.
Ladies and gentlemen, this has indeed been three arduous long years for me and my team in ESM and SIMS. We went through all stages of frustrations, jubilations, anxiety, hopes and indeed fulfillment during the process of developing this campus. Needless to say, it is a learning experience not very many in our marine profession can claim and I am extremely proud of the team which worked relentlessly and with passion to produce nothing short of the best at the end.
Ladies and gentleman, this is an oft-repeated story. Why is it that ESM has to develop a maritime training institute like SIMS? Training is indeed not the forte of a ship management company like ours. However, we are the end users on behalf of the owners we serve. In fact, when ESM started operating in 1998, we did not have a training institute of our own and we recruited so called “trained personnel” from the market. Many of them came with certificate which were enough to clear all audits and inspections onboard, but sadly lacked practical knowledge which not only made our life difficult but also posed danger to the ship they sailed on and many others in the outside world. Hence, what was borne out of sheer necessity was SIMS, Mumbai in 2002 to train our post-sea staff who needed to upgrade their knowledge and awareness to meet the requisite standard to sail on an ESM managed ship. From a handful of courses at the beginning, SIMS, Mumbai has now established itself as a leading international maritime training institute offering some 46 value added courses recognized by national and various other international maritime authorities. I am proud to add here that, although developed purely for ESM’s training requirement, the institute is currently grown beyond meeting ESM’s requirement and offering specialized training courses to a couple of outside ship owners to upgrade their sailing staff. If things go well, we hope to extend this kind of service to the others interested in such specialized and high end training services in future. After all, knowledge is meant for sharing and enriching each other than keeping it hidden under lock and key. The idea of exclusivity to SIMS for ESM was purely on the necessity that we need to ensure the crew that we put on board our managed vessels are trained and once that requirement is met, we can share this exclusive services to other like minded, quality conscious agencies as well.
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The blue print for SIMS always emphasized on what we do require to produce the best maritime officers and crew- the cost, or rather cutting the cost, as a third party ship manager, is always our forte. In other words, we knew it is a costly venture, but we were determined to carry on till the end at the pace that our purse could allow us. Fortunately, we had the good wishes of all our clients who continued to patronize our services to provide us a steady income to enable us to complete the project in three years of time. I sincerely thank you all for your continuous trust and faith in us as your manager.
Thankfully, we never had to curtail ourselves for doing things the way we wanted to do and needed to do. We bought the best machineries and equipment in the market and not from the scrap yards. Thereby we have ensured that our boys are getting hands-on training on equipments, which are presently on board. Many equipments are again home grown. Practical knowledge and idea of the faculty and the technical superintendents have been put to use in developing them.
We are grateful that some of the manufacturers like the engine maker Mitsui B&W offered generous assistance. They also modified the equipment to suit our teaching requirement. ESM pulled every bit of its in-house resources-money or expertise to build what we believe is the best and the result is in front of you all today. Ship-in-campus is one such example I am extremely proud to present to the world, and through which the in-house technical team has shown their high caliber, standard and expertise.
India is indeed a land of booming economy and opportunity but also a land of challenges not easy to maneuver for outsiders. Nevertheless, we are proud of the fact that we have done absolutely no compromise on our ideology and values and we are extremely lucky that we did not have to depend on any outside agency to adhere to this philosophy of ours.
Finally, if I say this is the end of our dream, I would be wrong. This is just a beginning, and we have many more miles to go before we sleep. We have only developed the hard ware and infra structure of a world class training institute and now the real challenge is to develop the soft ware part i.e. developing a team which will produce the best cadet in the world to sail on our ships. With all our efforts and hard work of my team, this is again only a matter of time- we will be there.
Once again, I thank you all present here for being with us and sharing this moment of celebration with us. |
SIMS, pre-sea campus at Lonavala is a case of logical backward integration for a maritime training institute since the future generation is made in such a nursery than in a university. SIMS, Lonavala is the cradle of our future sailing force and we have spared no effort in nurturing them to the best of our ability and sincerity.
SIMS reflects the heart and soul of ESM. It reflects our devotion to duty and commitment, our passion for hard work, our sincerity for transparency and fair governance and above all, our responsibility to the society and to the industry that we belong.
When we sent our architect Mr. Christopher Benninger to sail on one of our ships, we had a very clear intention in our heart. We needed to represent in our campus a reflection of our beliefs, values and concerns in addition to the maritime environment that the cadets will be living in future.
The campus architecture is based on the environment friendly concepts like solar energy, water harvesting, water recycling, energy conservation through use of natural light etc. We are sure such measures will also impress upon the young minds in the campus to carry on the same philosophy to the ships they will be sailing in future.
When we looked around for a construction company to build this unique campus, we zeroed down on one organization, SPCL, a part owner of the TATA group, the management of which at end of three years I count as some of my best professional friends.
Two questions which have been often asked and which I try to avoid- not because I cannot provide the politically correct answers but simply because they are irrelevant and do not have any meaning in the dictionary of ESM (1) How many ships does ESM manage and (2) How much money did we spend on SIMS. ESM has never been attracted to quantity. It is quality and quality alone right from day one. We are probably very few ship managers in the industry who started business with ISM certificates from two classification societies i.e. DNV and NK. In today’s world of ship management with the owners in buying spree of ships, adding the numbers in the profile is easy for any ship manager. However, unfortunately we cannot ignore the fact that each of these ships need to be run by qualified and competent mariners and engineers and the responsibility lies in each one of us, the managers as well as the owners to see to it that these mariners and engineers get requisite training and mentoring to competently sail the ship for us. Gone are the days of Christopher Columbus who could afford to lose direction and still arrive to discover America instead of India. In today’s world, he would have at the best lost the job for incorrect navigation and arriving at the wrong destination. |
