Woolwich Ferry Visits the Maritime Skills Academy’s Training Centres
Woolwich Ferry Visits the Maritime Skills Academy’s Training Centres
At the end of 2024, the Maritime Skills Academy (part of Viking Maritime Group) hosted London River Services’ Woolwich Ferry Team to our Dover and Portsmouth facilities. It was a pleasure to host General Manager, Darren Ellis and his team as they participated in some training.
Read Darren’s full testimonial below to see what he had to say.
“The Woolwich Ferry Marine Operations Team are responsible for the Woolwich Ferry service delivery, maintenance of assets and infrastructure and asset renewal. The Woolwich Ferry service sits within Transport for London’s (TfL) Rail & Sponsored Services Directorate (R&SS).
The Woolwich Ferry (WF) Marine Operations Team has restructured the ferry service over the past two to three years, which included voluntary compliance with international marine standards, such as The ISM Code, for what is an Inland Waterways Category C ferry service on the Upper Thames River at Woolwich. Part of this voluntary compliance with international marine standards included all of our operational people completing STCW training at the Maritime Skills Academy training centre at Dover.
The WF team found the training facilities at Dover to be state-of-the-art. The training, led by experienced and engaging instructors, provided a positive training experience for all our people. Thereafter, this training has successfully been incorporated into their operational roles at the Woolwich Ferry Service.
The two Woolwich Ferries are modern diesel-electric hybrid double-ended vessels which carry lorries, vans, cars, cyclists and foot passengers. The vessels are equipped with four hydromaster azimuth thrusters for maximum manoeuvrability in a confined and intensive route of operation.
The WF Marine team worked closely with the MSA Portsmouth vessel simulator team to profile the WF vessel operating and manoeuvring characteristics, and for the first time to digitally map the Upper Thames operating area within the Woolwich Reach.
A regular monthly programme of emergency contingency training was completed throughout 2024 with all bridge teams training and exercising using the world-class simulator facilities provided at MSA Portsmouth. The simulator exercises also incorporated some of the more testing vessel manoeuvres specific to the WF service operational envelope.
The simulator training has been a great success and has been enthusiastically received by our bridge teams. It has prepared them for a full range of potential adverse future operational events, ensuring they can react as required if and/or when such events materialise, keeping our people, assets, infrastructure and the environment safe.
Working with the Maritime Skills Academy has been a truly collaborative partnership which has significantly enhanced our operational standards and the service we continually deliver to our customers.”
