A Message From Our Founder

Let me start with a question.

Think of the last maritime training course you or your team attended. Had the person at the front of the room ever stood on a bridge in heavy weather? Signed off a vessel's safety management system? Sat across the table from a port authority after something went wrong?

If you hesitated before answering, you are not alone. That hesitation is the reason LIMA exists.

I spent 22 years at sea, eight of them as Master and six as Supercargo and Superintendent. I then spent 25 years with Lloyd's Register, managing its Marine Management Systems consultancy and training across EMEA and leading Marine & Offshore teams across Southeast Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Along the way, I built businesses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

In all those years, one thing never changed. There is a gap between what the regulations say and what actually happens on board, in the port control room and in the office ashore. Too often, training fills that gap with slides. At LIMA, we fill it with experience.

So what makes LIMA different? Let me be specific.

• You learn from people who have done the job. Our instructors have commanded vessels, led classification society teams and run ports. When they teach a regulation, they also tell you how it holds up at 3 a.m. with a deadline, a crew change and a surveyor waiting on the quay.
• You get a team, not a lecturer. Every LIMA programme draws on Master Mariners, academics, regulators, port executives, maritime lawyers, QHSE leaders, logistics experts and technologists. From the bridge to the boardroom, and from the engine room to the courtroom.
• We train the shore, not only the ship. Many of the decisions that lead to incidents, delays and losses are made ashore, by superintendents, Designated Persons Ashore, port managers and executives. We train them too, because that is where lasting change starts.
• We speak your language, literally. We deliver in Arabic and in English. No professional in this region should have to understand a safety-critical concept in their second language.
• We build around you. There are no off-the-shelf courses. We shape each programme around your operations and your national workforce goals, and we deliver it where you need it: in your facilities, on board your vessels, at offshore sites or online.
• We measure what changes. We agree objectives before we begin and measure the results when we finish. A certificate on the wall is not our goal. Safer, stronger and better-led operations are.

Now, here is my invitation to you.

What is the one challenge your team faces that no course has yet solved? It might be a new fuel arriving on board, a regulation you are struggling to implement, a port expanding faster than its people, or a new generation of national talent ready to lead. Tell us about it at info@lima-uk.org, and let's design the answer together.

The IMO has called on our industry to move from policy to practice. Across the Middle East and North Africa, that journey is already under way, and at remarkable speed. LIMA is here to make sure people keep pace with it.

I look forward to meeting you, whether in the classroom, on the quay or on board.