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Marine Log Interviews Richard Mueller on COVID-19 Marine Industry Impact

Marine Log article April cover

Richard Mueller, CEO & President of NETSCo and CEO of Choice Ballast Solutions participated in an interview with Marine Log magazine on how the COVID-19 virus has affected the maritime industry through NETSCo, Choice Ballast Solutions and a number of other companies.

“From the onset of the COVID-19 virus,” Richard Mueller explained, “we have actively encouraged any employees that are not feeling well to stay at home. We have fully supported any and all efforts to keep our employees safe and healthy. Our personnel at NETSCo and sister company, Choice Ballast Solutions (Choice) – in both the Cleveland, Ohio and Tampa, Florida offices – are working from home; and travel has been restricted to essential client projects. During the past month, we have put measures in place to ensure we continue to serve our customers in a way that is safe for our partners and for our employees, while delivering our services on-time and to the very best of our ability. Currently, we are preparing for our offices to open on a limited basis with the guidelines suggest by both our local governments and the federal administration.

“The maritime community has come together as one and our thoughts go out to the seafarers who are continuing their voyages to sustain our much-needed supply chains, as well as acting as a critical supply source of transportation in getting medical goods and equipment to ports around the world.

“As we move forward, like most businesses working in the maritime industry, we will continue to monitor very closely any developments in controlling the spread of the Coronavirus. At NETSCo and Choice we have been using Sharepoint, Dropbox, and remote meeting software like GoToMeeting and WebEx for document collaboration and virtual face-to-face meetings between our engineers and clients for many years and will continue to do so. Recently, to address some of the challenges we would be faced with while our employees are working remotely, we added virtual resources and tested new options for connecting as a group, for example, using Microsoft Teams® and Zoom for meetings. We are continuing to do everything we can to deliver the high-quality services that our clients depend upon in the maritime industry.”

To read the entire article, click here.