Meet the partners is a series of interviews with the LASH FIRE partners who present core of the project. We ask the partners about their expertise, expectations from the project and anything we want to know about fire safety. For the sixth edition of Meet the Partners, we interview Grit Ladage, Project Manager at Center for Maritime Technologies (CMT) and leader Work Package 3 – Cooperation and Communication.
1. What are the areas of competence of CMT- Center for Maritime Technologies?
The Center of Maritime Technologies gGmbH (CMT) is a non-profit research institution that deals with research, development and innovation and provides consulting services in the maritime industry. Our engineers cover a range of competencies. The CMT currently focuses on production and shipyard organization, lightweight structures and new materials, energy efficiency and alternative fuels, and life cycle performance assessment.
2. How do the goals of LASH FIRE fit with CMT’s objectives?
The aim of CMT is to strengthen the maritime sector and industrial value chains through national and European research projects. LASH FIRE deals with the fire safety of ro-ro ships, one of the most topical issues, and we are delighted to be able to make our contribution by supporting with the life cycle cost assessment, to facilitate the adaptation of our developed solutions with the overall goal to increase safety of maritime transport.
3. What is your specific role in LASH FIRE?
I am responsible for the management of the project at CMT, with a focus on communication, dissemination and exploitation. Via a dedicated work package together with my partners SEA Europe, Interferry, BV, RISE and Magellan, I am coordinating any communication, dissemination, and exploitation activities for the project.
The more awareness we raise, the more impact we have. So we are steadily looking into opportunities to share our developments and findings with stakeholders, for example by organising public conferences and webinars.
We are also continuously exchanging with the scientific community to assures the take-up and re-use of our results in other research initiatives and follow-up activities.
Last but not least , LASH FIRE is a research activity funded by the European Commission, so it is important to also inform the general public on how the public money is spent and what great things derive from it.
In LASH FIRE we go beyond the pure development.
We are also evaluating and assessing the developed solutions and finally even bring forward some of them towards IMO, to be considered in recent discussion for the revision of the existing guidelines.
I consider this as quite spectacular.
4. Is LASH FIRE the first maritime fire safety project you are working on?
Due to the nature of my job, the topics always vary, but at least it stays within the maritime field. The first project I was working on, LEANSHIPS, investigated alternative fuel solutions, in HoliShip the partners developed a holistic design concept for shipbuilding. Prior to LASH FIRE, I worked mainly on the RAMSSES project, which looked at lightweight solutions in the maritime sector. That was when I first came into contact with the topic of fire protection. The SOLAS regulations stipulate that if you want to replace steel with composite materials, the material properties, including fire resistance, must be equivalent to those of steel.
5. What is for you the most interesting part of work done in LASH FIRE?
I can’t say to have any preferences regarding the solutions, though some of them might be of higher impact regarding the fire safety. Also, safe transport of electric cars is one of the most discussed topics nowadays, which also grants us a lot of awareness. But in the end, everybody is contributing to decreasing the fire risk, not only for safe cargo but most importantly of the lives of passengers and crew.
In LASH FIRE we go beyond the pure development. We are also evaluating and assessing the developed solutions and finally even bring forward some of them towards IMO, to be considered in recent discussion for the revision of the existing guidelines. I consider this as quite spectacular.