Collaborative project – oPortUnity

We are facing fundamental challenges that go beyond the interests of any individual port. In tackling climate change and the energy transition challenges, digitization is a key aspect. However, ports are inclined to develop solutions for these challenges individually. The result is that several similar solutions are being worked on at the same time and that they are insufficiently compatible with each other. Hence, time and money are used inefficiently and our common customers in the Netherlands have to work with different systems to achieve the same results.

Imagine how much faster we could go if we could utilize each other’s efforts. To do this ports need to share all the knowledge, research, applications, solutions, and data among them. We do this by putting our common customer’s interests first, which transcends the individual (port) interests.

Rough estimates show that by sharing only five digital applications among ports of the Netherlands, the following results could be expected for each year:

  • 64% Development cost savings (2.3M Euro)
  • +21% Faster development speed (10k hours)
  • Increase in customer satisfaction

Three large ports in the Netherlands, Groningen Seaports, Port of Amsterdam and Port of Rotterdam, participated in a design sprint and investigated how we can ensure that ports can adapt and utilize each other’s solutions more easily. The result was the oPortUnity project. Through oPortUnity, ports are working together on an Appstore for port digital solutions. Digital products can be developed and used uniformly by all participating parties. This not only makes it interesting for external parties to develop standard solutions for ports but also improves the user experience of customers by providing a seamless unified user journey. At this moment, two critical applications have been shared via oPortUnity. Five other sea ports and solution providers are exploring different options to join this community.