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\u201cI haven\u2019t spent this much time in Norway, without international travel, since I was at school,\u201d laughs ISS CEO Frank Olsen over a call on Microsoft Teams.<\/p>\n
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With a career that\u2019s taken in seven years at sea, mostly on RoRos with Wallenius Wilhelmsen, living in Costa Rica (where he briefly captained a dive vessel), work in Dubai, for Wilhelmsen Ships Service, and most recently a regular commute from his home outside Oslo to the Inchcape HQ in London, being forced to stay in one place must have come as a shock to the system.<\/p>\n
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How\u2019s he coping? <\/p>\n \u201cWhether my family are as happy with me being here is another matter,\u201d he jokes. \u201cYou\u2019d have to ask them!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The children in the background fall suspiciously silent\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Finding solutions <\/p>\n As a sprawling global organisation boasting over 240 offices, in 68 countries, covering around 2,500 ports, this ships agency giant relies on its expert local people (roughly 3,000 of them) and its customers\u2019 regular ship movements. Business as usual allows the firm to provide a vast array of services, ranging from full cargo agency, to dry-docking, survey and inspection, crew logistics, financial management, and bunker calls \u2013 all with the promise of standardized levels of service, transparency, value and complete global compliance.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But, of course, there\u2019s been no business as usual.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, what impact has Olsen seen?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe short answer is roughly a 20% reduction in activity for the months of April and May, but we can see that\u2019s coming back now,\u201d he reveals. \u201cSome segments have ceased trading entirely \u2013 cruise in particular, where we had to handle numerous challenging repatriation projects for passengers and crew \u2013 whereas others are operating according to schedules.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHowever, even those that are sailing obviously face restrictions, especially with crew changes and logistics. That\u2019s an important service offer for us, so we\u2019ve had to adapt quickly. Luckily, we have excellent people with boots on the ground in ports worldwide and they, almost regardless of individual lockdown restrictions, are regarded as key workers. The world needs ships to sail and we\u2019re on hand to enable that, facilitating seamless, reliable and efficient port calls, and finding solutions for our customers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIn these disrupted times that\u2019s arguably more important than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS) CEO Frank Olsen opens up on the challenges of COVID-19, the benefits of a global network, and a fundamental shift in the established ships agency marketplace. Change, he says, is coming. \u201cI haven\u2019t spent this much time in Norway, without international travel, since I was at school,\u201d laughs ISS CEO Frank …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[7954,2641],"class_list":["post-12750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-frank","tag-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/12751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>\u201cWell, it\u2019s different,\u201d he says, as the sound of his three kids returning home from their newly reopened school filters into the background. \u201cBut I\u2019m quite enjoying it in some respects. The pandemic has obviously created entirely new working routines, but our organisation has responded well and our IT infrastructure has proven to be very capable, as have our people. There\u2019s been challenges, clearly, but overall I\u2019m satisfied with how it\u2019s worked out.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>You\u2019d expect the \u2018challenges\u2019 Olsen refers to to be severe.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/imagesedit.marinelink.com\/images\/storage\/w800h388\/9d170d77.jpg\")
(Photo: ISS)<\/em>
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