Course overview
Maritime transport operations depend on decisions made hours or days before a vessel arrives: accepting cargo, selecting ports, issuing instructions, confirming berth windows, planning bunkers, managing documents and responding to disruption. Poor vessel schedules create missed connections, congestion exposure, demurrage, cargo claims, avoidable fuel costs and strained customer relationships. Operations teams need to balance commercial commitments with vessel capability, port restrictions, regulatory duties and changing conditions at sea and ashore.
This course develops the practical knowledge required to plan and control vessel voyages and liner service schedules. Participants examine vessel types, cargo flows, chartering relationships, port call processes, berth and terminal coordination, stowage constraints, bunkering, voyage cost control, laytime, demurrage, documentation and operational risk. They use port-call milestones, critical-path scheduling, voyage estimates, bunker calculations, schedule-recovery methods and exception-management procedures to make defensible operating decisions.
Instruction is delivered over 10 days in a classroom in more than 50 cities or live online. Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides approximately 6.5 contact hours. Short instructor briefings are combined with shipping cases, scheduling simulations, operational calculations, group reviews and individual application planning. Participants build components of a vessel operations file during the first week, then refine it through disruption, cost and compliance scenarios during the second week. They leave with a completed vessel voyage and port-call operating plan, supported by schedules, cost estimates, checklists and decision records.
The course is suited to professionals who coordinate vessel calls, cargo movements, terminal interfaces or shipping documentation and who need stronger command of the links between commercial agreements and daily operating control.

