By Ken Anderson, Director of Special Projects

When laytime and demurrage enthusiasts (yes, we know…), bloggers and industry people talk laytime, they seem to consistently circle around the same subjects: the implications of free pratique and BPVOY4, inchoate notice, this and that specific clause, and all the different interpretations stemming from interesting case studies and the many reports and books on this topic. We get it: clauses are interesting, their interpretation is interesting, and they do present interesting stores – sometimes.

The thing is, of all the topics discussed by the bloggers, the experts and the war stories from the guys and girls in the daily line of fire, the one topic which is almost never discussed is The laytime and demurrage calculation (sound of thunder)!

Often, when people do discuss The Calculation (!), they tend to skim the surface. And when the discussion gets any deeper than dispatch or demurrage, all of a sudden, they have an important meeting to go to.

That’s a shame, because the end-to-end laytime job does not always get the appreciation it deserves! The Calculation is the output and is, in itself, an important document. But! It is just one document of many other important documents which, when taken together, can determine the final outcome.

The end-to-end laytime job is very much about Attention To Detail (or ATD, as the punctilious call it) by the people who need to sit down with some pretty sharp focus and take all the information from the voyage documentation. Then, remain razor-sharp and ensure correct transformation into a thorough Laytime Statement which, after various tedious counters, fairly does allocate the time and thence the value in what could only be described as a deep dark sea.

Can end-to-end management of all – or part of – your laytime process benefit your business?

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