A river ship operated by one of our clients and working on a bridge construction project in another country had sudden technical difficulties: it sprang a leak.
Linking the crew and the shipyard
The head office of our client, once notified by their crew, quickly identified the repair needs and concluded that the best option was to get the repairs done at the nearest shipyard instead of waiting until the vessel was back in their home harbor or trying to fix it themselves onboard.
Luckily, they found a few potential repair facilities and tasked us with checking the availability and capabilities of the various shipyard candidates based on this list.
Due to the technical nature of this survey, we were provided with both a set of questions and more details about the nature of the problem and the specifications of the ship itself. With this information, we contacted the shortlisted shipyards. Many of them were small local operators, and it took repeated attempts to reach some of them. While some of the people we called did not speak English, we were able to handle the conversation in their local language, surveying their availability, technical capabilities, and other requirements.
One of the shipyards had the required technical characteristics. However, the client and the shipyard did not initially agree on the best approach to solve the problem, leading to a lengthy exchange in which we helped the parties discuss the details.
Eventually, they addressed all the outstanding questions and reached an agreement, resolving the issue.
Benefits to our client
The client did not have to contact the shipyards directly, saving them the overhead of repeatedly calling the same operators until they could reach them. We also handled the language barriers, which arose from the fact that most of the shipyards in question were small and locally owned. All the client needed to do was provide us with their questions in English and the applicable technical specifications—we took it from there and coordinated with the shipyards accordingly.
Building on our local services:
- The client did not have to involve a fully-fledged and relatively expensive interpreter in these discussions,
- Had the convenience of making a single call to initiate discussions with multiple shipyards,
- And was able to easily overcome the language barrier.
