GPA approves $15.6 million for new technology

Automated terminal management system designed to deal with rapid growth at the Savannah container port

Ga. Ports approves $15.6M for new technologyAutomated terminal management system designed to deal with rapid growth at the Savannah container port

The Savannah Morning News

By Mary Carr Mayle

DTI News Service

Georgia Ports Authority is spending more than $15 million for an automated terminal management system that will better track containers arriving at and leaving the port.

The system should help the port accommodate growth of container volume from more than 2 million to 5 million a year in the next 10 years.

The Automated Terminal Asset Management System will integrate a number of technologies with existing software at GPA's Garden City Terminal to form a network that will track, record and report the movement of all commercial trucks at the gates and through the facility.

It also will automatically record the placement of every container and truck chassis on the terminal, sending work instructions to all connections along the network and providing customers with live updates of their shipments.

"Customers as well as employees will be able to track and verify the movement of containers from ship to train to truck in real time, and that will improve efficiency and marketability," said GPA spokesman Robert Morris.

With daily gate volume at the Garden City container port predicted to double by 2018, the new system quickly will become critical to maintaining efficiency, said Doug Marchand, GPA executive director.

"The ATAMS project is a logical progression toward helping us increase capacity, reduce trucker turn-times and provide technologically sound and competitive services to our customers and other trading partners," he said.

Among the container yard operations the system will track are:

movement of containers on and off ships, on and off over-the-road trucks and on and off rail.

movement of containers between the ports' rail yards at the Intermodal Container Transfer Facility and the marine terminals.

movement of containers between stacks and warehouses.

Total project expenditures of $15,657,279 will be funded through internal capital budgets from the current fiscal year through 2009.