This time of the year is always a good opportunity to consider lessons learned and set new year’s resolutions for a new start. Our special column Industry Voices: ‘Goodbye 2020, hello 2021’ aims to provide an overview of this challenging year and set new targets for 2021 to move forward.
In this context, we have asked Mrs. Pia Meling, Vice President, Sales & Marketing at Massterly AS – A Kongsberg Wilhelmsen joint venture, to make an assessment of 2020 from her perspective and share her message for the new year across the global community. Among others, she wishes for the new year that industry will ensure lasting efficiency gains from automation and remote services and use every mean to drastically speed up decarbonization path.
The 2021 challenge will be for us as an industry to “build back better”
SAFETY4SEA: Focusing on your area of expertise, what were the most important industry development(s) within 2020?
Pia Meling: The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the ongoing digitalization of the entire maritime value chain: ports, yards, shipowners, operators, ship managers, charterers, equipment suppliers, authorities, classification, and service companies. Even IMO has had to change the way they work so that key environmental meetings and decision making is now done digitally.
We have as an industry jumped several years ahead in the maturing process for digital and remote ways of working, and this will increase the overall efficiency and collaboration in shipping & maritime.
S4S: Focusing on your area of expertise, what do you think that will be the biggest challenge(s) for the industry in 2021?
P.M.: I hope that 2021 can be spent recovering from Covid-19 and that the heroic crew members who have been stuck at sea finally will get some rest and time with their loved before returning to decent work conditions. The 2021 challenge will be for us as an industry to “build back better”: ensure lasting efficiency gains from automation and remote services and use political momentum, insight, and new technology to drastically speed up our decarbonization path.
S4S: What would be the 2021 resolutions for your company/organisation?
P.M.: Be the change we want to see!
The views presented hereabove are only those of the author and do not necessarily those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
