MONDAY

It is my first day back at work after a two-week paternity leave. My wife and I are now getting used to life with our new born baby daughter Jasmine. Following two weeks away I have much correspondence to catch up on. As part of my role I conduct media awareness training sessions with Northern Marine Group employees. The seminars educate employees on the systems we have in place to correctly answer unsolicited media telephone calls should an incident occur on one of our managed vessels.

As a former journalist, I try to pass my experience on to my colleagues to assist them in handling the media calls correctly. I have been fortunate enough to visit many of Northern Marine’s international offices to conduct the training, however today’s session is to a small group in our head office in Glasgow.

TUESDAY

An important part of today is finalising and distributing the 4th Quarter edition of the Northern Marine YourCrew newsletter. The newsletter is emailed to thousands of crewmembers who work on our managed tanker and gas carrier fleet. It is hoped the newsletter offers entertaining and informative articles which are relevant to our seafarers. This offers a break from the regular operational communication they will receive, and hopefully provide some conversation starters on the ships. Writing, editing and designing the newsletter is the favourite part of my job. This quarter’s edition features an article on Lawrence Lingham, the experienced captain of the Stena Crystal Sky gas carrier. Before disseminating, I hold a final editorial board meeting to ensure senior management from Personnel and Operations departments are satisfied with this edition’s content.

WEDNESDAY

It has been a slow drive to work today from Glasgow city centre as the rainy winter weather is influencing traffic. Last weekend we changed the time on our clocks one hour back to winter time, meaning it is now dark outside when we leave our office at the end of the working day. This morning is spent checking and updating the various Northern Marine Group social media accounts and facilitating our recruitment department with some advert designs.

I spend my evening at home watching Celtic compete in the Champions League. The noise of the football supporters is drowned out by my screaming daughter who appears to have no interest in competitive sport. I do however have plenty of time to change her attitude.

THURSDAY

Today the Company is executing an emergency response drill which involves employees from Operations, Personnel and HSEQ. The drill is being carried out in real time on one of our managed vessels – in this case an LNG Gas Carrier. During the scenario, onshore management and our seafarers are tested to establish how they handle a hypothetical pirate attack. My role in the exercise is to ensure that both onshore and seagoing employees correctly answer unsolicited media calls. By conducting role play media calls, I try to extract information from employees. During this drill the targeted employees reassuringly follow the correct procedure. Several emergency exercise drills are completed each year and we often welcome our ship owner clients to observe or participate so they have a thorough understanding of our systems and procedures.

Today I also work on writing an article for our intranet news. The news platform complements the Stena News and Announcements section of InForum.

FRIDAY

The best thing about my job is the variety. Working across the Northern Marine Group of companies I can meet and work with many different colleagues and today I assist Tritec Marine with a prospective news item for their new website. In the afternoon, I write another article for NMG intranet news platform.

The weekend is upon us! And while in previous years my weekend would have involved playing competitive football; this weekend I will be changing nappies. I wouldn’t change it for the world.