POPEI

The project is part-financed by the European Union.

Description of the project POPEI

Background

In the recent years initiatives established a great base for activating the potential of river and sea ports in the Danube region. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) recommended to use in order to measure port perfor-mance introduced by science based methods of different GIFT, INWAPO, DAHAR or WANDA projects are difficult to apply in practice because of their standard nature, irrespective of the specificities the individual ports possess.

The Consortium of Hungarian Federation of Danube Ports (Magyar Dunai Kikötők Szövetsége), National Company – The Maritime Danube Ports Administration J.S.Co. Galati (Compania Nationala – Administratia Por-turilor Dunarii Maritime SA Galati) and Port Authority Vukovar (Lučka up-rava Vukovar) has been granted by the European Union and The City of Vienna in the frame of START Danube Region Project Found for the im-plementation of the project POPEI.

Objectives

The aim of the project is to increase competiveness and efficient operation of inland waterway ports by:

1. Adjusting the KPIs to the ports’ needs and specificities in order that they could use them in practice and provide their market by real in-formation on their services and performance;
2. Transforming the KPIs to a performance indicator system applicable for (self) measurement for the ports and qualification of services.

Target groups are all ports along the river Danube, but the focus was on the 3 partner countries (Hungary, Romania and Croatia).

Execution of the project

The process of execution is summarised by the following flowchart. Detailed description and the concrete results will be shown below.

Activity 1

Activity 2

KPI system specialisation

Based on the results of project analysis:

1. A selected number of KPIs is built into a complex excel-based port performance measurement system
2. Consultation of selected port-operators in order to fine-tuning the system.

Main focal points:

• The system is to reflect the specificities and the real market needs of the Danube ports, i.e ports with different functions across the region are to be involved to represent diversity;
• The system is to measure the performance of ports, i.e data and infor-mation to give KPIs a value are achievable and can serve for market pur-poses;
• The system is to be used for quality management purposes, i.e . based on the measurement system, facilities and services can have classifica-tions in form of ratings.

As an output of this activity, an excel-based performance measurement system and a detailed description of the measurement system were created.

Activity 3

Measurement and qualification

Testing the port performance indicator system in practice, check of its feasibility and usability, by:

1. selecting ports to involve with the test (appx 5-10 ports from HU, RO and CRO altogether), meaning asking them by the partners to take part in the measurements;
2. carrying out self-measurements, meaning sending the participating ports the excel-based system to fill in;
3. making quality assurance of the results with special regard to the suit-ability of the KPIs and the solidness of the data provided;
4. checking the classifications the system generated in form of ratings for the respective functions of the ports participated in the test.

The output of this project phase is a study, which summarises the testing results and description of the performance measurement system.

Activity 4

Dissemination

Publication of the project results is to be going through:

1. Constructing a website: The website serves as the online surface of the measurement system to which all ports along the Danube have access. The website will provide information about the ports qualified and all the measurement results. There’s no intention, however, to replace www.danubeports.info website; the aim is to support that with the new site by fitting this new information in the overall database;
2. Introducing the project and its achievements within the MLBKT Congress. Presentation in pdf format

Documents:

• Synthesis of the project analysis
• Description of the performance measurement system
• Excel-based performance measurement system
• Summary of the testing
• Summary of the project results