Columbia CEO Mark O’ Neil calls for new era of partnership-based ship management

(Posted on 16/03/26)

The president and CEO of Columbia Group has called for a shift in the traditional ship management model towards a more integrated partnership approach, arguing that the future of the industry lies in closer alignment between shipowners and managers.

Leading integrated platform in maritime, logistics, leisure and hospitality and offshore services, Columbia Group held an industry event in Oslo Norway this week covering the topic Partner-Shipping: What does partner shipping look like for your business.

In his opening speech, Mr O’Neil reflected on the origins of third-party ship management, which he says emerged more than 50 years ago to separate vessel ownership from technical and crewing operations. The model allowed shipowners to benefit from economies of scale, global resources and the investments large managers could make in technology, training and operational systems.

However, he noted that over time the model became increasingly commoditised.

“Margins in ship management are extremely small, which often led to services becoming standardised,” Mr O’Neil said. “The result was that management sometimes became a process of simply joining the dots, rather than actively thinking and acting in the best interests of the owner.”

The perception that ship managers were detached from owners’ priorities has been a major barrier to the growth of third-party management, he said.

In response, Columbia Group has focused on what Mr O’Neil describes as a partnership or “second-party management” model, where the ship manager operates as an extension of the owner’s organisation rather than as an outsourced service provider.

“It’s a mindset as much as a structure,” he explained. “We call this Partner-Shipping, and it requires what I describe as an ‘insourcing mindset’. Even if we are based in different locations, mentally we must be insourced, not outsourced. We need to think and act as if we are part of the owner’s team.”

He also emphasised that while technology and digitalisation are transforming the maritime sector, shipping remains fundamentally a people-driven industry. He added that economies of scale remain an important advantage of professional ship management, particularly in procurement, compliance and operational efficiency.

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