Brackwater Ferry Terminal is now planning its berths on Tidewell Berth. Since yesterday morning the duty managers have published the day’s plan from Tidewell Berth instead of the whiteboard next to the radio, and the whiteboard has been wiped for the last time.
Brackwater is our second port on Tidewell Berth and our first ferry terminal, and it taught us a lot.
Ferries are a different kind of busy
A small cargo port might see a handful of calls a day. Brackwater runs three linkspans, a published timetable and a steady stream of freight sailings that fit in around it. Most calls are fixed months ahead. The hard part is the few that are not: a relief vessel covering a dry-docking, a freight ship waiting on the tide, or a linkspan closed for maintenance.
So we changed a few things for them, and those changes are now available to every port:
- Timetabled calls are pinned. The planner works around them and never moves one without asking a person first.
- Linkspans are resources, not just berths. Each has its own maintenance windows and vessel compatibility, so a closure re-plans only the calls it touches.
- Swaps before delays. When a ship runs late, the planner first suggests moving it to another linkspan, and only then suggests holding anyone.
Six weeks, not a fortnight
We usually tell ports to expect two weeks from first import to first published plan. Brackwater took six. The solver was not the slow part. The rules lived in the heads of three duty managers, not on paper, so we spent the first fortnight sitting with them and writing the rules down.
That work is as much a part of the product as the solver is. A plan the duty manager cannot explain is a plan they will not trust.
If you run a ferry terminal and any of this sounds familiar, write to hello@tidewell-lab.xyz. I would be glad to compare notes.
Bram