Passage Planning has been a huge administrative burden for bridge officers. It requires a great amount of man-hours when multiplied across fleets. The reason for this is that the procedure has traditionally been done manually, with the navigator required to input all the necessary, correct data. That is a huge burden, and responsibility, not to mention an inefficient use of valuable man hours.
At NAVTOR we made it our mission to do something about this. After in-depth discussions and co-operation with 16 leading shipping companies, our team of experts launched an extensive, four-year product development process to digitize and automate the process.
The solution is our award winning Passage Planning Module, which is a part of our Maritime Route Planning tool NavStation. It enables navigators to gather and manage all necessary navigational information, such as ENC cells, journey way points, ETD, ETA, etc., in one place as they are planning their voyages. Time-consuming and laborious manual tasks such as filling in Excel sheets are made obsolete thanks to automatic logging and calculations of navigational data. To reduce the risk of human error, the software analyzes the entire route and compares the navigational data with the vessel's draught, height and other specifications to ensure full safety from berth to berth.
After planning a safe, secure and economical route the software enables navigators to gather all the information to compile Passage Plan Documentation for Vetting, Port State Authorities and other relevant organizations.
The result has been nothing short of transformational, cutting the time spent on average passage planning from 3-4 hours to approximately 30 minutes.
Key features of the Passage Planning module
Plan routes in the latest updated ENCs, with the required ADP, AENP, NavArea Warnings and Navtex stations automatically added to each waypoint/leg in the route.
Add and edit waypoints in PassagePlan view. All changes of waypoints are updated simultaneously in the Passage Plan.
Safety check of all waypoints/legs based on vessel specifications (draught, UKC, height etc.)
Position fix and parrallel indexing in the route will automatically be added in the Passage Plan document.
Exchange routes between other vessels in your fleet.