On 19 May, Damien Bertin, Business Director at Opsealog, joined People Tech Maritime to explore exactly that difference. The full session is available to watch below.
Why Offshore Reporting Systems Were Never Built for Performance
Daily reports, fuel logs, and off-hire records. These were designed to satisfy contractual obligations, not to drive operational decisions. The same data points have been requested across the OSV sector for decades, with no standardisation in what those numbers are actually supposed to represent.
The result is fleets that measure everything and act on very little. According to industry estimates, only 10% of the OSV fleet can share data ashore in real time. The gap between data collected and data used is where performance is lost.
The Five Reasons In-House Performance Projects Fail
Shipowners and charterers are increasingly trying to build their own performance frameworks. Most stalls within the first year. The failure points are consistent: no clarity on objectives, misaligned targets between owner and charterer, poor data quality, no single owner for the numbers, and no continuous review process.
The problem is rarely the data itself. It is the absence of a decision framework around it.
What Vessel Performance KPIs Actually Change in Offshore Operations
An operator should be able to tell within 60 seconds whether their fleet is performing against their own operating standards. That is the practical test. If it takes longer, the system is producing information, not supporting decisions.
The KPIs that drive real operational change in the OSV sector are not the most complex ones. They are the ones owned by a specific person, visible at a glance, and mapped to a decision that someone can actually make.
The Charterer and Shipowner Gap That Data Can Close
Both parties monitor the same vessel with different priorities. A charterer sees the day rate against productive output. A shipowner sees fuel cost and asset utilisation. Without shared metrics, standby time becomes a dispute rather than a starting point for operational improvement.
Around 50% of OSVs spend half their time idle. That is six months of operating cost per year with no productive output. A shared idle time KPI definition is often the first place where the commercial relationship between owner and charterer either works or breaks down.
What the Tullow Ghana Case Shows About Real Results
The MV Flat Confidence case, an AHTS operating for Tullow Ghana, produced a fuel reduction of 732.6 cubic metres over the programme period, resulting in 1,984 tonnes of CO2 avoided. The highest savings rate reached 91%, with a best practices application rate of 95% during on-field standby.
These results came from the same data the vessel was already generating. The difference was in how that data was structured, validated, and acted on.
Learn more in our recent case study: https://opsealog.com/ghanaian-owned-vessel-wins-opsealogs-first-fuel-efficiency-award/
Understanding your data is one thing. Acting on it, especially now, is no longer optional.