Case Study: New Safety Film for Specialized RO/RO Operator

August 2010

Maritime Training Services partners with Totem Ocean Trailer Express(TOTE) to produce a new custom safety film: Keeping It Safe: Lashing Onboard TOTE Ships.

Improving safety

The film improved awareness and reduced lost-time accidents for TOTE, an operator of RO/RO cargo ships between Washington and Alaska.

“We’ve loaded and unloaded our last 20 ships without a lost time injury, since we began sharing the video with our longshoremen and crews,” says Dale Westerlin, TOTE’s Terminal Operations Manager in Tacoma, Washington.

Customizing the production

Because TOTE operates a unique RO/RO service (cargo is not lifted, but quickly driven onto and off the vessel via tractor-trailer, van, or flatbed) it was difficult for the company to find an existing training film that could portray their unique operational environment and distinct safety culture.

With Keeping It Safe, TOTE addressed this need and produced a long-term asset and training resource.

“It’s nice to have that real-world feel,” says Westerlin, “our lashers say this is the most realistic depiction of what really goes on our ships that they’ve ever seen.”

Our Team

To create the film, TOTE worked with MTS Executive Producer Hal Calbom and Technical Director Gregg Trunnell to shoot and script the fast-paced, narrated presentation, which features interviews with foremen, crew members and union officials.

“MTS did a great job of interpreting our message, staying on schedule, and making it easy. We scheduled the shoots and reviewed the script --- but MTS did everything else. Keeping It Safe feels like us --- it was a real team effort.”

Watch a preview from the custom made video: