The SkillSea project was presented to an audience during the European Shipping Week event, with details concerning the four-year project and its goals to improve European seafarers’ place in the shipping industry.
Lidia Rossi, a project team member, explained that the project was seeking to provide EU maritime professionals the skills they need for the sector’s rapidly changing labour market.
It should be reminded that the SkillSea project was firstly launched in 2018 with the goal to
- Increase the number of European maritime experts;
- Defeat the obstacles concerning the mobility of seafarer labour;
- Enhance the team-spirit between education providers, competent authorities and the industry;
- Plan tech-developments in ship operation and the effects they’ll have on the industry’s skills requirements.
In the meantime, during the event, Hans Petter Hildre, from NTNU in Norway, revealed that the project conducted a research on the skills needed and implemented a survey of more than 1,140 seafarers and 474 shore-based personnel had identified the need for new digital skills — including handling Excel sheets and transferring data from one system to another.
He added that for the time being the feedback provide a clear image that seafarers will have very different work in the future. Therefore, the project will provide up-to-date training that will enable seafarers keep up with the advances in onboard technology and new ‘green’ propulsion systems.
The project will deliver the skills needed to adapt to increasing globalisation and to ensure that strong maritime clusters remain in Europe
… Hans Petter Hildre added.
Moreover, Susie Bogojevic-Simonsen, legal affairs and internationalisation manager at SIMAC, Denmark, noted that the project develops educational pachages to assist seafarers fill skills gaps and needs, mostly focusing on transferability, sustainability and adaptability.
SkillSea was praised by a member of the European Parliament during the event in Brussels.
Concluding, during the European Shipping Week 2020 Oxford Economics presented the EU’s progress, reporting that the sector is under pressure due to the difficult market conditions, while the Danish Shipping highlighted the importance of having more women onboard.
