SAFE-DOCK

 

Along history, Europe has had a traditional and close link to maritime merchant transport, which hasn’t been changed by processes like economy’s globalisation or the frontiers’ liberalization happened inside the European Economic Area (EEA). Furthermore, its importance has even increased, because of the market liberalization, as we can see watching some statistics. For example, 70% of European foreign trade and 30% of domestic trade is carried out by sea.

  That involves a strong increase of sector’s competitivity, a reason for the European Union to establish two main action lines:   

•  Establishing a global strategy that could allow the European fleet to be more competitive through positive measures, saving employment at maritime sector in the EU  

• Safety’s improvement carrying out the services offered at commercial harbours.

  This second action line is the key to get an improvement of sector’s competitivity, taking into account that costs of goods’ transport depend on efficiency of national seaport services, and this one is directly related to safety.

  In this way, identification, evaluation and control of the risks of harbour activities plays an important rule in order to reduce costs associated to accidental losts, that are the result of work accidents. Therefore, dockers’ labour safety cannot be overlooked by sector’s enterprises if they want to preserve and improve the quality levels of service, the operational costs, efficiency and technological development, in order to confront future challenges and customer requirements.

  Labour safety’s integration in diary enterprises’ management is the key to get a significant decrease of labour accidents and their associated costs, so it’s one of the main action’s field to improve European harbour’s competitivity as focal points for goods’ reception.

  The reasons for taking into account labour risks prevention in that field are:

• The large tonnage of goods loaded and unloaded from ships arrived at the harbours, and the most labour accidents are related directly or indirectly to material’s handling. 

• Normally, training offered at this sector is directed to machines’ operation and other work tasks, often overlooking labour safety.

• Speed in loading and unloading ships leads dockers not to take into account the basic norms of labour safety.

  The main objective of this project is to prevent labour risks suffered by dockers working at the sector of maritime good’s transport, through the improvement of continuous professional training in labour safety, using new Technologies of Information’s Society as an essential core of it.

 Beside, it is expected to be created a training tool that may be attractive for those workers and may establish a new methodology to increase training’s quality, exploiting the high pedagogical potential of new Information’s Technologies and the advantages they offer, as well time flexibility as elimination of physical distances.

  In this way, together with an improvement of labour safety of that workers’ collective, it is expected to make them easier the apprenticeship in new technologies. The use of the training tool will favour workers the access to training through the net, allowing them to acquire competences and skills along whole life.

  For further details please visit the official project website  

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