STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
From the VMMA Secretary – May 2015
At the recent Moorers Breakfast, some concerns were voiced regarding the Marina Office being closed for 3 consecutive days. Moorers who are at the Marina through the week have had difficulty finding the office open.
Also, the Committee wondered if it would be a good idea to have photos of the Harbourmasters up in the Woodland Lounge and in the Phase 2 building so that new moorers/infrequent visitors knew what they looked like and could have a word if necessary if they saw the Harbourmasters out and about on the Marina.
From the Marina
Lee replied, giving some background to the recent change to the Office Hours:
Bit of background to the change… As you know we run the marinas with a joint team, the Managers, finance team and admin work across both sites, so we did a 12 month review of how many moorers come into both offices on which days and for what purpose and over 80% come in on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday at both, with Wednesdays been the quietest day of the week, closely followed by Tuesday and Thursday. We now close Wigrams too on Wednesday afternoon to try and catch up with office work.
She went on to say:
The office is not ‘closed’ on any day apart from Wednesday in reality, there is never a ‘closed’ sign on the door just the sheet displaying the times when various members of the team are available, the Harbourmasters can do every transaction that a current moorer or new moorer could possibly want to do in the office and are on site from 9 till 4pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It’s a difficult one as I could change it to say something different but equally we need to make sure the harbourmasters have some time out of the office and remember on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday there is only one of them available so I am trying to manage moorers if you like to do their non-diesel related transactions on the other 4 days or electronically and avoid asking for diesel on Wednesdays. Otherwise we end up with the one harbour master walking/ driving back and forth all day.
We are not an ‘emergency service’ so we are not allowed to say that we are- we offer out of hours assistance on the harbour master mobile number.
But we are trying to encourage moorers to pay invoices electronically and limit the need for the office at Ventnor on non-essential days whilst keeping the balance of being available. It’s such a reactive service and one that is virtually impossible to measure, it’s not cost effective to have someone sitting all day in the office so hence the multi-tasking of the harbour masters. Equally the harbourmasters are part time members of the team who then provide 24/7 cover for assistance – is it right that they get a call at 10.00pm for a bag of coal or gas cylinder? It happens!
With regard to the suggestion that there should be photos of the harbourmasters up:
I have really struggled to get the harbourmasters to have their photos taken, I think that we would find it difficult to get them to have them up on the wall, it is hard for them to have privacy when they are not on duty as it is – I think the uniform should be sufficient, especially as we will have to mix some of the harbourmasters across both marinas to cover holidays. We have to remember they live on the marina and we do still have moorers who will expect them on or off duty to assist in whatever they need.