Bimco is launching a new key performance indicator (KPI) programme and is hoping to include around 10,000 ships through the involvement of owners and managers outside of the shipowners’ association.

The scale of the venture promises to provide the largest benchmarking platform for owners and managers to compare performance.

Incoming Bimco president Sadan Kaptanoglu says the KPI scheme will give managers the information and digital solution they need to improve at a time when the regulatory and technical demands on them are increasing.

“Shipping is a challenging business and particularly now it is becoming more and more challenging," she said. "We are entering a highly regulated period with new technology and this will continue, so it is important owners and managers improve their management skills.

“Bimco always tries to be ahead of everything so we need to be proactive — and the KPIs give us the tools to be proactive.”

The KPI programme was initially acquired from shipmanagers’ association InterManager, and Bimco has spent the past two years trialing and improving it.

There are already 6,000 ships signed up from 300 companies, with 80% of the tonnage coming from Bimco members and the rest from non-members. The participants are mainly from the shipmanagement centres of Greece, Germany and Singapore.

Kaptanoglu says that as the world’s largest commercial shipowners' association, Bimco is the right organisation to run the not-for-profit, free-to-use project, which will also be open to all companies.

She explains that the scale, accuracy and consistency of the data will be the main factors in allowing shipmanagers to evaluate their own performance and improve.

“To improve, we need the correct data and information, and to make sure we are comparing apples and apples,” she said.

Participants will submit data on 33 KPIs over a wide range of areas such as budgeting, ship availability, spill containment and officer retention.

The information will be hosted by specialist marine IT company SOFTimpact and comply with IMO and international security standards.

Kaptanoglu says participants should have the confidence that the system is fully secure and only shipowners will be allowed to access their own information, while Bimco itself will not have access to individual company data.

“If a company is looking to improve, or if they want to learn how similar crew and companies are performing, they will find the answers in the KPIs,” she said.