Stamford, Connecticut, USA: The Maersk Training Centre in Denmark attains a high standard of performance in all the functions of a training centre. The centre has as the very first won the DNV SeaSkill award for excellent performance.

Claus Bihl (centre), manging director at Maersk Training Centre received as the very first the award Certificate of Excellence in training by Odd Torset (left), senior vice president and regional manager DNV Maritime Nordic and Henrik Bach, country manager DNV Maritime Denmark last week.

DNV has previously noted that some 50% of training providers are underperforming. DNV has therefore developed DNV SeaSkill - a 4-step certification system for the professional verification of training and benchmarking of performance. The target is to ensure a uniform quality of training in the maritime industry. The professional verification, which is based on standards developed by DNV, is available to academies and training providers as the basis for developing training courses and programmes.

As a major shipowner and a huge and highly respected container operator, the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group has created its own training centre which is well known for its high quality performance and content. The Maersk Training Centre offers a range of highly advanced technical and management training among others within the maritime area.

“It is an honour to set a standard for the industry,” said Claus Bihl, manging director at Maersk Training Centre. “What is important to us is that it will also give us the tools to ensure that our new training branches in India and the United Kingdom offer exactly the same quality as we have traditionally done in Denmark.’

The award for excellent performance was a result of Maersk Training Centre demonstrating its high quality of training throughout a DNV four step process of verification:

1. Certification of the training centre management system as being in full compliance with DNV’s Standard for Maritime Education and Training.
2. Certification of at least one simulator in the training centre as being in full compliance with DNV’s Standard for Maritime Simulator Systems.
3. Certification of training courses in compliance with the DNV Standard for Certification of Learning Programmes to ensure that courses are properly structured and designed, have clear learning objectives, and that the instructors and assessors have adequate expertise.
4. A benchmarking study was conducted through discussions and interviews with instructors and management, class observations and document reviews.

“DNV is very pleased to present this very first award to the Maersk Training Centre and to the whole A. P. Moller-Maersk Group for their outstanding performance and the high quality content of their training. Hopefully, their example will be followed by other training providers to ensure an even higher quality of seafarers and an increase in safety at sea,” says Odd Torset, senior vice president DNV and regional manager DNV Nordic Countries.