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SWAN HELLENIC (SH VEGA)
CASE STUDY

Swan Hellenic is an established, well respected owner-operated heritage brand with more than 7 decades of expertise in undiscovered destinations.

Their brand new ship SH Vega, named after the first ship to cross the Arctic Northeast Passage, has been designed to journey to off the beaten path destinations and remote polar regions in style and comfort.

The Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assists the cruise ship industry to prevent and control the introduction, transmission, and spread of gastrointestinal (GI) illnesses on cruise ships.

Cruise ships face rigorous inspections and must maintain a minimum score. HACCP principles including temperature control are a major part to these
inspections. Swan Hellenic have easily satisfied requirements by utilising Hawk hardware and software to ensure records are kept and that they are kept accurately.

This has also freed up more time for the crew members to concentrate on providing the highest levels of service Swan Hellenic passengers have come to expect.

“I have worked in the cruise ship industry for many years. I have recently been introduced to Hawk Safety and decided to try their system on the new fleet for Swan Hellenic. Freeing up our crew members time to offer the highest level of service to our guests is of course an important reason, but foremost we must be able to keep the highest possible food standard 24/7 – 365 days a year, Hawk helps us achieve this”

Frederik Ekelund, Cruise Operations Manager, Oceanic

The Challenge

SH Vega has over 40 assets across 9 decks all of which require temperature checking twice a day. This is a very time consuming process.
Paper based manual checks on the vessel are simply a burden. It’s all too easy to have missing records or messy sheets and then there’s the storage requirements of all these paper records.

Swan Hellenic had considered digital systems previously to make this easier but had major concerns in regards to Internet connectivity. Vega, sister vessel Minerva and the upcoming Diana all sail to very….very remote locations where internet connectivity can be lost not just for hours but for days at a time. WiFi based sensors would simply not be reliable.

Why Swan Hellenic chose Hawk Safety

Hawk Safety partner, Southern Retail Systems already supplied the label printers onboard Swan Hellenic vessels. Swan Hellenic is managed by Oceanic in close co-operation with V-ships Leisure.

Following conversations with Oceanic regarding temperature tracking, SRS understood the concerns regarding connectivity at Sea and knew the Hawk system’s Lora based sensors would be an ideal fit.

Following the demonstration of Hawk to the team at Oceanic, it was decided to trial the system onboard Minerva and the brand new Vega.

How Hawk Safety Responded

Hawk Safety understood the challenges, the vessel layout, the assets, the current processes and was able to build a solution with our own manufactured hardware and software specific to SH Vega. The relevant hardware was allocated, the on-boarding information was loaded onto the system and the installation was planned. Hawk engineers sailed on Vega from Copenhagen, Denmark to Tromso, Norway, this allowed us to fully understand the challenges.

The hardware was all ready to go and installed on Day 1. Our engineers then spent the following days fine tuning the system by ensuring the hubs were located correctly, monitoring the data to ensure the readings were frequent and accurate, and providing staff training. By the time Vega docked in Tromso, all the sensors and hubs were in place sending the records to the hawk dashboard with no interruptions.

During the weeks following the installation, we continued to work with the team to provide a more suitable reporting format. The Vega team now receive a simple daily one page report with three readings from each asset taken throughout the day. Any anomalies are logged in red allowing the team to act accordingly. We have also continued to monitor the system remotely when the ship is out at Sea on expeditions.

Hawk continues to do its monitoring very well, even on occasions when internet is lost completely, the hubs are caching the temperatures and uploading them when the wifi reconnects, this is all seamlessly done with no requirement for the Vega crew to reconnect or reset devices

The Results: Time Savings

42 units manually checked twice a day
at approximately 1 minute per unit x 365 days = Saving of 511 hours per year

The Results: Cost Savings

Data collection Time £14,308
Training employees £260
Managers Site visits £540
External Audit Time £360
Maintenance call outs £1,800
Paper, ink, printers £390
Insurance Premium reductions £120
Efficiency – emails / Comms £988
Reduced Wastage £520
Reduction in Energy Cost £559
Total Savings £19,845
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