The global shipping industry is increasingly competitive with a larger number of ships than ever being built and placed in time charter market with global demand for tonnage near outstripping supply. This has created a situation where charterers employ more ship performance reports in an attempt to file performance claims, and ship owners do the same to protect themselves against those claims (both naturally wishing to protect their company's interests).

Ship performance evaluation reports have been created by Weather Routing Companies for the last four decades and are utilized by many parties including vessel owners, charterers and their legal counsel, but among those there has been misinterpretation and misunderstanding in answering the question “Did the vessel perform to the charter party warranty?” because of either biased reports or reports not being created to Arbitration standards. Flawed vessel performance reports are merely tactic to delay commercial settlement, wasting lots of time and only adding extra cost to shipping companies. To maintain a competitive advantage in a fiercely competitive shipping market nowadays, time is a finite resource.

Weathernews contends that it is now high time for industry professionals and legal counsel to confirm that the only acceptable method of assessing ship performance is that of a “fair weather analysis” with verified weather analysis based on weather observations in the vessel's vicinity by several independent or governmental sources. As new technology has recently allowed for this to occur on a nearly automated basis, Weathernews proposes the above solution for all sailings, with a view to reducing disputes and hence puts forward this approach as valuable Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) tool.

Listening to many client experiences and learning about market pressures has led us to believe that trustful relationships between owners and charterers will be more and more important in the future if a company wishes to maximize profit and reduce non value adding tasks. To establish these relationships, one must firstly establish a common agreed standard of performance measurement and secondly have strong analysis to aid quick decision making. In the Official Performance Auditing Seminar on the 16th of May 2008, we would like you to analyse the following issues for quick and fair dispute settlement.

• - The Arbitration standards and awards
• - Suggested Charter Party clause on Speed and Consumption
• - Correct methodologies and common mistakes
• - Mediation _ better dispute resolution?
• - Weather and seas analysis accuracy and validity
• - Interpretation of unclear wordings and definitions in a Charter Party
• - New advanced methods in voyage planning
• - An alternate method of evaluating ship performance in bad Weather
• - Optimum Port Operation information service _ Port go or no go forecasting