Key Topics

Cruise Port Productivity: Upgrading Infrastructure for a Growing Industry By Steve Cutler The cruise industry is growing rapidly, adding new excursions with increasing frequency, building new ships with designs that make some terminals’ existing infrastructure obsolete, and launching mega-ships with incredible capacity. The challenge for cruise ports to become increasingly productive in order to capture their share of the expanding market ...

Ports Strengthen Partnerships Via Community Outreach By Kathy A. Smith Ports are involving local communities in several ways that help educate and engage stakeholders. This involvement not only acts as a way to bridge ports to their communities, it can encourage acceptance, involvement and even partnerships. “How we achieve outreach is with open communication,” says Manuel Almira, executive director for ...

Community Outreach Toolbox Creating a dialog with the many communities surrounding a seaport takes broad shoulders. Once meaningful partnerships are established, port outreach programs are almost uniformly welcomed with open arms by interested neighbors. However, before achieving that level of engagement, ports are likely to encounter blank stares, self-interest or even hostility. Outreach initiatives that generate two-way communications take time ...

The Slippery Slope — Ethical Considerations in Port Business Decisions By Lori Musser Improving corporate behavior in a way that positively impacts the world is becoming everyone’s responsibility. Seaports with good corporate citizenship devote more time to the business at hand and spend less time in hot water. Recognizing that, port leaders are looking to ethics as a strategic resource ...

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 ...

Turning on the Funding Tap By Lori Musser The need has been established for a new port facility. The site is available, architectural and engineering plans are in the works, permitting and regulations are being addressed. And a dearth of dollars might squash the entire project before a shovel hits the ground. Or, a thoughtfully assembled package of public and/or ...

Port to Market: Building Infrastructure to Meet Demand By Jim Romeo Before the Port of San Diego drafts its master plan, it will have spent three years analyzing and investigating data from multiple sources. This includes public outreach, over 100 interviews with stakeholders and agencies and numerous public workshops and board meetings that culminated at the end of 2015. Its ...

Seaports Maintenance and Modernization By Kathy A. Smith The role that maintenance and upgrades play at ports is naturally critical to keeping assets running well and cargo moving as efficiently as possible. Ports are challenged to prioritize their limited resources between major capital investments required for bigger ships, versus the cyclical major upgrades of wharves and other facilities. And although ...

Metrics and key indicators can help a port improve its performance, if used in a meaningful way By Kathy A. Smith The job of determining what data and key performance indicators ports need to track and monitor is an ever-evolving one. One size does not fit all as performance measures are assessed based on a variety of factors – operations, ...

Ports use environmental data as an outreach tool with community groups, stakeholders By Meredith Martino Port projects and port operations are the subject of a variety of environmental regulations – caps on air emissions from mobile sources, requirements for habitat mitigation, mandates for sediment monitoring and limits on water pollutants. To demonstrate compliance with these regulations, ports and their industry ...