ITOPF seminar at GARD, Arendal, September 2016

ITOPF was invited by GARD P&I Club to deliver a seminar at the company headquarters in Arendal, Norway. GARD employees from various offices around the world, and with a broad range of experience in casualty and environmental claims participated. The two-day event was organised in collaboration with maritime law consultant Colin de la Rue, who began the seminar with an introduction to legal aspects of marine casualties, which was followed by a presentation on ITOPF's role in spill response by Richard Johnson.

The focus of the remainder of the seminar was a desktop exercise, where participants were split into teams and tasked with acting as case handlers in a dynamic hypothetical spill scenario. The scenario took the participants through various potential stages of an incident, from the initial incident notification through to final claim settlement, and presented various legal and technical challenges for consideration along the way relating to shoreline response, cargo dumping, fisheries, tourism, environmental impacts and wreck removal. Discussions were informed by a presentation on fisheries and environmental impacts by Nicky Cariglia, as well as a screening of one of the ITOPF films (<link knowledge-resources library video-library video>No.4 Shoreline clean-up). The seminar concluded with each of the teams presenting their decisions, providing a useful opportunity to reflect on everything that had been covered over the two days.

Categories: Europe, Training & Education