UK – WORLDWIDE – Last October theTT Club held a seminar in London dedicated to improving the standards employed when loading shipping containers, a factor which, when combined with insufficient packing, it calculated accounts for 65% of the damage to freight. Reference to the Cargo Incident Notification System (CINS) employed by the ocean carriers themselves backs up the Club’s findings showing 30+% of cases investigated showed stowage and poor packaging as responsible for the problems incurred.
The main problem for the TT Club and other insurers is simply the length and complexity of the supply chain involved in many cargo movements. With so many handling processes en route it is tricky to allocate blame, was the cargo badly stowed or the box lifted incorrectly causing extreme movement? Road freight also suffers in the same way, particularly unaccompanied trailers and so now the TT Club has commissioned the expert e-learning course designer Exis Technologies to develop the CTUpack e-learning™ course.
The aim of the course is to focus industry attention on the significant and dangerous implications of bad packing and provide guidance consistent with current good practice. The course takes account of the recent revisions to the ILO/IMO/UNECE* Guidelines, anticipated to be approved as a non-mandatory, but enforceable, Code of Practice later this year. The CTUpack e-learning™ will evolve to reflect any further changes to the UN documents and other industry good practice guidance.
The course is an online training tool for those involved in the packing and unpacking of cargo transport units (CTU), comprising freight containers, swap bodies, trailers and suchlike used in intermodal transport, the first release of CTUpack is a foundation level course which has just been launched. The course modules focus on the topics of cargo, transport, packing and arrival and there are lessons on the issues most relevant to container packers, including forces and stresses encountered during transport, and how these need careful consideration when packing and securing cargo in a CTU.
Students are assessed continuously through the course and receive a course completion certificate which records their final score. The e-learning course is accessed via the web and is available for individual training or for national, regional or global company training programmes. Multiple courses are managed using Exis Technologies’ e-learning management system, which provides administrator functions for setting up courses and monitoring students’ records. TT Club’s Risk Management Director, Peregrine Storrs-Fox, says:
“CTUpack e-learning follows the well-established IMDG Code e-learning training course from Exis, which is also sponsored by TT Club. Both courses fit closely with the risk management approach that the Club has always fostered among the global freight transport community. As in other operational sectors of the industry, training is clearly the number one loss prevention measure and, if adopted as a core feature of the operator's culture, can greatly reduce the number of incidents incurred globally each year throughout the industry.
“It is no surprise that the correct packing of containers is high on the agenda for industry bodies, regulators and insurers, as the consequences of unsafe and badly secured cargo are serious. It is important to take account not only of financial losses but also in too many cases serious bodily injury to operators, and even death. Increased levels of training to maintain and improve the expertise of those employed by shippers, consolidators, warehouses and depots to pack containers and other transport units is now essential.”