The Portcast platform provides comprehensive visibility into delays and incidents that can impact shipments. This article explains the key concepts of delay tracking, incident reporting, and their correlation, and how you can use these for better understanding shipment delay reasons.

What constitutes “delay” and when does it apply?

Delay tracking measures the difference between an originally provided time, typically by the carrier, and the actual time. Or if the voyage is not yet completed, then the difference between the originally provided time by the carrier and the current estimated time (either provided by the carrier or predicted by an AI-based model).

Delay can, therefore, be reported and predicted at different stages of the voyage:

• Before the voyage starts, delay can be relative to the Departure time. Carriers will typically provide an Estimated Time of Departure (ETD) on their Sailing Schedules information, at which the vessel is planned to depart.

  In some situations, however, the Actual Time of Departure (ATD) is later than the ETD. This is typically reported on the Portcast platform as a “Delayed Departure” incident.

  Note that Delayed Departure events can happen at both the Port of Loading (POL), but also at any intermediate Transhipment port where the ATD is later than the original ETD.

  There can be various reasons for Delayed Departure i.e. vessel entered the port later than planned and hence departed late; infrastructure or resource delays at the port causing delay in departure; or completely unforeseen delays e.g. weather adversity.

• Once the voyage starts and is ongoing, the Portcast predicted ETA starts getting calculated based on real-world conditions like:

  • ATD from scheduled ports
  • The carrier vessel’s actual route and possible deviations, as compared with an ideal route scenario)
  • Possible voyage disruptions (incidents) affecting the vessel’s voyage progress, like port rollover or port rotation changes along the voyage (more on this below)
  • Congestion at departure, intermediate or destination ports
  • Seasonal events affecting port activity, weather adversity, etc.

  Therefore, a shipment which is undergoing a voyage will have its Predicted ETA being calculated dynamically in the Portcast platform for the entirety of its voyage; the “delayed by” time values displayed in the Portcast Web Application or API will reflect the difference between the Carrier’s ETA (cETA) and Portcast’s predicted ETA (pETA) at that point of the voyage, and be continously updated (example: “Arriving Late by 9 days”).

• After the vessel has arrived at the end of its voyage in the Port of Discharge, the Portcast platform will report the shipment as “Arrived”; along with this status change, the actual observed delay between the Carrier’s ETA (cETA) and the Actual Time of Arrival (ATA) will be reported on the platform. This allows a clear understanding of the actual delay that happened between what was originally planned and what ended up happening in the real world.

What are the challenges of ‘explaining’ delay?

While incidents can contribute to delays, and the Portcast platform tries to convey context by reporting them in our platform, they do not always provide a complete explanation. Some delays may occur without a directly recorded incident, and conversely, an incident may not always result in a delay (for example, port congestion does not always result in delay).

Additionally, multiple incidents may contribute to a single delay, making it challenging to pinpoint a sole cause. For example:

• A vessel may depart late (delayed departure) but make up time during transit, resulting in no delay upon arrival.
• A port congestion event may lead to significant delays, but this may only be evident once the updated ETA shifts accordingly.

What are ‘incidents’ and what type of incidents are reported by the Portcast platform?

Incident tracking on the Portcast platform captures specific events that can contribute to explaining shipment delays. While incidents do not always cause a delay, they provide potential reasons behind schedule changes, and help better form a ‘context’ that provides explainability.

The Portcast team is working constantly in adding better and more incident reporting capabilities into our platform. Currently, these are the existing incidents available in our platform, along with the contextual information associated with them: