Berth Window and Vessel Call Board

At a container or multipurpose terminal, the quay has a limited number of berths and quay cranes, and every vessel call is booked into a window on one of them. This MoveTheWheels concept illustrates a Berth plan board for berth planners that places each call on its berth lane over the coming days with the number of cranes it will work, and flags a clash as soon as a revised arrival pushes one ship into another's window.

Arrival times change constantly and reach the terminal by many routes: an agent's email, the port community system, a vessel position service. When one ship runs late, its pilot booking, its tug order and the next vessel's berthing all have to move with it, and the planner often learns of the knock-on only when two ships are due at the same berth. Whether the real constraint is the berth, the cranes or the gangs to work them is rarely visible in one place.

The illustration shows the plan for one terminal with a date chip and a 48-hour or 7-day switch, above tiles for vessels alongside, arrivals in the next 48 hours, berth clashes and quay cranes available. A timeline with a Now marker runs across four berth lanes, with most calls labeled by vessel, voyage and crane count: calls shown in green, an amber call for a delayed arrival and a red call it now overlaps, marked by a clash flag with the hours of overlap. An Arrival updates table lists each vessel's old and new ETA, the source of the update and when it was received. A clash card for the affected berth lists the knock-on steps: move the pilot booking, re-order the tugs and offer the next vessel another berth, with Propose new window and Notify harbor master buttons.

Three other Burdenoff products appear by design. Arrival updates are designed to be imported by FluidGrids from agents, the port system and position services, each keeping its source and time. A quay crane with an AssetHandler work order, here for a spreader fault, is designed to drop out of the crane split and show as out on its berth lane, and the quay cranes tile shows one crane short of the full set. Gang coverage for the berth is designed to come from CrewFoundry, with crane drivers and the lashing gang counted against those planned. Once the planner proposes a new window, the line agent and the harbor master are designed to see the same revised plan.