The Observatory of Port Professions was designed to reveal both work organization and training requirements of companies operating in the port sector, with the ultimate aim of drawing up, based on information gathered (and therefore responding to the real needs of this sector), a grid of "questions” capable of orientating the formulation of “training offers” for port companies.
By doing this, such offers would be effective, being aimed at satisfying specific requirements, and efficient, by allowing the optimization of human and financial resources allocated for the port training sector.

The main operative instrument is an IT system, devised as a web-based software (internet
application), capable of covering the information gathering phase, with an “active data collection” mechanism (allowing the interviewer to confront the information with the model before inserting it into the system).

The system can gather data with three different access levels, allowing not only the interviewers to access the system, but also the interviewed companies managers and workers, in order to guarantee the best modularity, flexibility and usability.

The instrument finally analyses the data, thanks to a series of elaborations which can be activated in any given moment. It allows data to be assembled and presented in tabular form in order to reveal personnel organization, company functions, organizational processes, roles, duties, etc... presented both by number and frequency.

HOW THE “OBSERVATORY” WORKS

The Observatory is a continuous monitoring instrument which is most effective as part of a cyclic system. Data revelation, information analysis and training planning is carried out on the basis of real training requirements in the sector.

Companies are therefore beneficiaries of made-to-measure training initiatives. Following the initial training initiatives, data revelation takes place once again, to see if, and how, the training has affected the beneficiaries and if new training needs have come out. This means a new series of interviews, investigations, analyses and planning of training initiatives.
The Observatory is therefore an instrument for constantly revealing training requirements, which has allowed us to acquire a good understanding of the professional profiles in the companies we interviewed.

Once the information has been gathered, it is inserted into a database where it’s elaborated, analysed, synthesized, and made available to the port operators involved and other interested parties. The model we used, which was elaborated on the basis of a preliminary investigation, was designed to reveal information regarding:

• company organisation
• employees’ roles and duties
• functions present in the company
• production processes
• skills and expertise related to production processes.

This basic information, or analytical understanding, the analytical part of our data model was developed and integrated within a structured model, in which functions, roles and processes are properly linked to the workers skills and expertise.