APICS Terminalplanner business rules summary

As soon as the ship is actively monitored in the Westerscheldemonding area by APICS, specific rules apply concerning the approach of the ship. To ensure this process runs smoothly and safely, late changes in berthing (planning) follow a separate route.

From the moment of departure, the terminal operator can no longer modify the existing planning (berth, mooring post, mooring side and mooring position) via the terminal planner.  The planned ETD can still be adjusted, as long as the ship has not yet been reported for departure by the shipping agent. As soon as the departure or shifting has been declared, the ETD is copied from APICS and cannot be modified via the terminal planner.

Mooring schedules of shifting ships can be changed as long as they have not yet received departure permission (from the lock management or from the ACC depending on whether the mooring implies lock usage or not).

The planned berth schedule created or updated via the terminal planner must at least partially coincide with the requested berth in APICS (specified by the shipping agent via the berth request).

Allowed:

• Position request APICS: S903 / Planning Terminal Planner: S901 - S903
• Place request APICS: S903 / Planning Terminal Planner: S901 - S905
• Location application APICS: S901 - S903 / Planning Terminal Planner: S903 - S905

Not allowed:

• Place application APICS: S903 / Planning Terminal Planner: S901
• Location application APICS: S903 / Planning Terminal Planner: S905 - S907
• Location application APICS: S901 - S903 / Planning Terminal planner: S905 - S907

At certain berths mooring piles have both an A and a B mooring pole, for example mooring piles 70A and 70B at berth 1710. There are terminal operators who only plan by number (70) but APICS expects an exact specification of the physical mooring post (70A or 70B).

If a terminal operator uses the upload function for schedules or reservations, APICS will suggest a physical mooring post itself if the terminal operator only specifies the number portion. By default, mooring post B is added (except when it does not exist, then A is used).

If a terminal operator adds or changes a schedule or reservation in APICS, a physical mooring post will need to be selected.

At some terminals the planning software of the terminal operator does not contain any data about moorings, only about bollards. Consequently, the mooring cannot be specified in the upload file (CSV or JSON). APICS expects unique combinations of mooring and bollard to be able to register schedules or reservations.

In such cases, APICS will check if the bollard number is unique for the terminal from which the schedules are loaded. If so, APICS will itself add the corresponding mooring to the planning or reservation. If the same mooring post number occurs more than once within one terminal, APICS cannot unambiguously determine the corresponding mooring and the planning or reservation will not be accepted by APICS.

It may happen that the ship has to be berthed with its bow or stern at the neighbouring terminal. In such cases, this shall be mutually agreed in advance between the terminal operators. 

It is not possible to use the terminal planner to schedule a ship at a berth and/or mooring post of a neighboring terminal. When this situation occurs, the terminal manager must pass on this planning to the Port Authority Port planners who manually enter this planning in APICS. This planning is visualized in the terminal planner, but cannot be changed.

In a later phase APICS Terminalplanner will provide that Terminal managers can arrange this bilaterally in the Terminalplanner.

Berth schedules entered or modified by the Port planners of the Port Authority cannot be modified by the Terminal Manager via Terminal Planner. The Terminal Manager can contact the Port planners at any time to request a change and have it registered.  

This rule will only be applied when the "Automatically synchronize Terminal Planner with APICS" option is activated for the terminal in question.

Ships can be planned alongside another moored ship (planning in 2nd, 3rd or 4th row).

In order to be able to clearly determine which moored ship should be alongside and at which position the planned ship should lie, APICS expects mooring posts to be entered even when planning in the 2nd or 3rd row. If this does not happen, the ship will be planned in the middle of the berth provided.

The minimum distance to be observed between two moored ships is 20 meters. Terminal Planner will not allow a smaller safety margin. Should this be necessary in certain cases, the Terminal Manager may contact the Port planners of the Port Authority.

The security of the Terminal planner is based on which company is assigned as cargo handler within the APICS Cargo Reporting module (this follows the concession agreements). Since a user can only be linked to one company (by design), he or she can only enter schedules of terminals linked to that company. However, it can happen that separate companies are created on purpose, but that the user of one company should also be able to enter the schedules of a terminal of another company.

We provide in APICS the possibility that a particular company can authorize another company to enter the terminal schedules for its terminals. This authorization applies to all terminals of that company.

The shipping agent determines the mooring on the berth request. If the terminal manager wishes to schedule the ship differently in the terminal planner, he will receive an error message with the message to contact the agent. Only if the agent has indicated 'no preference' (GV), the terminal can choose the berth on the other side.

When due to a change in the place request, the mooring side differs from the planned mooring side, when the place request is approved, the planning is automatically removed in the terminal planner and the terminal manager has to reschedule the ship.