Customer Profile: United Tugs

Using BT Forms to Improve Compliance Communications

Tom Dantin, Vice President of Operations for United Tugs, Inc. is forward thinking when it comes to running the company better, and communications is no exception.

"At United Tugs we’re always looking for better ways to communicate with our vessels," says Dantin. "Because of the ever expanding requirements put on us by regulators, customers and our own safety management system, we were desperate to find a real time solution to sharing information with our offshore vessels that are beyond cell phone service. Boatracs was already serving some of these needs, but with BT Forms we can now share reports and records on whatever forms we need. The vessel simply fills the electronic form on his PC and presses send. He has a copy, I have a copy and Boatracs holds a copy for backup. We hope in the near future to completely eliminate paper from the process."

United Tugs has been operating tugboats since 1958, and the company has lived through good times as well as the bad. Now they face a new challenge – the tremendous increase in regulation in the form of Subchapter M, the soon to be inspection regimen for towing vessels, and the EPA. United Tugs has done their homework and has been preparing for several years to meet the challenge, a huge part of which will be acquiring and keeping the records necessary to prove compliance with the law.

"Over the years we have focused on cultivating a group of master mariners who operate our tugs. These are people with a long tradition of seamanship and skill born from a willingness to do what it takes and an uncanny relationship with nature and the sea – but without many clerical skills. So that’s the challenge," explains Dantin. "How do you go about keeping the documents and records needed for compliance without un-necessarily distracting these professionals from safely performing the tasks at hand?"

A Boatracs customer since 2004, United Tugs has identified BT Forms as a way to exchange the information needed for compliance without adding significantly to their Captain’s workload. A detailed reporting log that could take several hundred written words to fill can be turned into a simple form with a series of drop down lists that can be completed, archived and delivered in minutes – leaving more time to study the weather, plan, train crew, navigate and safely perform the task at hand.

As a member of the American Waterway Operators, United Tugs subscribes to and implements the Responsible Carrier Program (RCP), a safety management system meant to improve safety and performance. RCP relies heavily on records for training and maintenance, as well as records that reflect compliance with all of the requirements of a company’s operations manual and the procedures it prescribes. BT Forms will greatly reduce the work needed to document compliance with the RCP.

"United Tugs has recently reached 6,500 training hours received by employees since we began in-house training in 2005," states Dantin. "That’s a lot of hand written training records. We’re looking forward to having many of these future records on BT Forms."