DP World Southampton Completes Two Navis SPARCS Trials

A key business objective for DP World Southampton is to upgrade the terminal’s existing operating system to Navis SPARCS.  A fundamental part of the upgrading process is testing the system to ensure it operates as expected and then trialling it in a live environment.

Two trials have now taken place of the new system in a live environment.  The first trial of the landside functionality took place on Wednesday 17 March with the second trial, which included both landside and shipside functionality on Thursday 25 March.  Both trials took place between 0730 and 1130hrs with the ability to switch to the current system if necessary.

Brendan Bilston, Head of Operations, said:  “The terminal’s existing operating system has done us proud for the last 25 years but it is now time to upgrade to Navis SPARCS to keep pace with technological advances.  Live trials are an excellent way of testing the system and are in addition to the extensive scenario testing which takes place in the development environment.  In a live, real-time environment, we can also ensure that the users are confident in their use of the system after their training.”

Brian Thomson, IT Systems Manager, added:  “Planned live trials of systems before they go fully live are an essential part of our overall IT strategy when it comes to upgrading any IT system and Navis SPARCS is no different. 

Both trials were configured in such a way that if we had encountered any issues we were able to revert back to the current system very quickly.

We were pleased with how everything went – upgrading an operating system is no small task and it’s thanks to the hard work of everyone involved that the first two trials have identified a number potential issues that we can now work to resolve prior to a full roll out.”

Further trials of Navis SPARCS are planned over the coming weeks.