Leadership

The easiest way to pull the rug out from under a port’s success is to ignore stakeholders. Seaports need informed, supportive allies to set the stage for almost any project or initiative. By Lori Musser The easiest way to pull the rug out from under a port’s success is to ignore stakeholders. Seaports need informed, supportive allies to set the ...

Maintaining coastal property for maritime activities is critical to ports’ success and requires ports to find allies and partners in other levels of government, the community and the private sector to succeed. By Candace Gibson It’s a delicate balance to maintain a working waterfront and nurture relationships with parties who want a piece of valuable maritime real estate. Ports are ...

Mentoring and teaching the next generation of leaders should be a simple progression if you’ve started the process early and have a plan in place. That is where succession planning comes in. By Sandy Smith A decade or so ago, Gary LaGrange was sitting in a long-term strategic planning session, looking around the room of senior managers and assistant senior ...

Port Cooperation: In the Name of Productivity By Lori Musser Fiercely competitive at most times, seaports have been known to mine each other’s cargo and passengers, tenants and terminal operators, and even employees. They do come together to learn and to share best practices in some functional areas, and to speak in unison to legislators and regulators. What they rarely ...

Strategy at Seaports Is Key to Handling Capacity Challenges By Candace Gibson On any given day, the hustle and bustle of a seaport is devoted to the purpose of bringing in vessels, loading and unloading cargo/passengers, provisioning the vehicle and getting those vessels back out to sea as quickly as possible. The premise sounds simple enough, but providing sufficient capacity ...

Do Ports Know What’s Coming? Ports can use economic data to their advantage if they know where to look By Meredith Martino One of the hallmarks of the global financial crisis of 2008 is that so few people saw it coming. The indicators were not pointing toward doom. Yet, there were those who managed to look at the information underpinning ...

Technology trends in automation are changing how work is done at ports and terminals By Kathy A. Smith As automation begins to play a larger role at port terminals in order for seaborne trade to move faster, the impact will undoubtedly be felt by the labor workforce as jobs become less labor-intensive and more computer-based. Yet this paradigm shift won’t ...

Ports recognize that who they are and what they stand for is as critical as how they look By Meredith Martino Many ports live and die by their numbers: container throughput, volume of cargo, value of cargo, regional jobs, truck turn times, economic impact, tax revenue generated and so on and so forth. But numbers don’t tell the story of ...

Corporate social responsibility projects throughout Latin America set the region on a course for success By Tom Hranac While port operations remain and will essentially always be an exercise in moving cargo, ports throughout Central and South America are effectively responding to rising expectations from a variety of stakeholders about the subsequent effects of their maritime activities. As semi-public entities obligated to meet ...

Ports across the country are strategically planning to lead the way in emerging technologies, sustainability guidelines and energy By Kathy A. Smith The push for ports to evolve as technologically-advanced entities that adhere to increasingly strict environmental protocols while providing cost-effective and efficient service to their customers is no small task. But the job has become easier thanks to a ...