International Maritime Lecturers Association (IMLA) in cooperation with Admiral Makarov State Maritime Academy held the 10th International Conference on Engine Room Simulators (ICERS10) in Saint Petersburg in September 22-24, 2011.
The International Conference on Engine Room Simulators is the global forum for the exchange of knowledge, experience, views, research results and the identification of common problems with respect to the specification, design and use of engine room simulators (full mission/full task, part task or desk-top PC based). Previous conferences were held in Nantes, France (1993), Rimouski, Canada (1995), Svendborg, Denmark (1997), Vallejo, USA (1999), Singapore (2001), Wuhan, P.R.China (2004), Portoroz, Slovenia (2005), Manila, Philippines (2007), and recently in Kings Point, USA (2009).
The slogan for ICERS 10 was “Friendship, Sharing and Co-Operation”.
General sponsor of the Conference was the Russian company JST “Transas” Ltd.
The Conference was attended by 72 delegates from 19 countries worldwide
The major issues which were discussed at the Conference are the following:
- Management of marine engineers and ship’s electric engineers simulation training in accordance with new STCW Manila amendments;
- Engineering developments of the engine room simulators to meet the training needs;
- Standards and trends of skills assessment for marine engineers, electric engineers and ETO with use of training simulators;
- Engine room simulators integration into marine engineering training programs.
During the Conference the latest software versions of the engine room simulators of the sponsoring companies JST “Transas” Ltd., Kongsberg Maritime AS, Unitest and Rheinmetall were demonstrated to the participants.
Within a framework of the event the delegates also visited the International Exhibition “Neva 2011” and the Makarov Training Centre.
Next ICERS conference will be held in the Asia Pacific Region in 2013.