HPJ Solutions Gives New Life to the Maritime Employer Association Website

The association was looking for a company capable of developing a website that would interact with already existing authentication systems developed in Java, but more notably with web technologies capable of interfacing a site with Java based security and authentication systems. The association turned to HPJ Solutions as they had properly identified the association’s needs and in doing so, proposed to conduct a comparative study of the principal CMS’s on the market.

The Maritime Employer’s Association was created in 1969 as the industry concluded that it needed a better way to manage work relations with employees that load and unload cargo onto ships in eastern Canada. Arrivals and departures for ships don’t follow a fixed schedule and crews must work for multiple employers throughout the year. For this reason, the industry needed a common association to act on behalf of all employees. M.E.A.’s mission is to contribute to the continuing success of the ports under its jurisdiction by providing a qualified workforce, by managing partnerships with syndicates, and by the development and efficient management of collective agreements.

M.E.A. boasts around thirty category I members (owners or licensors and/or ship agents doing business with ports that fall under M.E.A.’s jurisdiction) as well as a dozen category II members (Employers of syndicated workforces working under the mandate of M.E.A.). The association is headquartered in Cité du Havre, Montreal. It houses a training facility, a dispatch centre as well as offices in Trois- Rivières and Hamilton, Ontario.

In 2007, under the auspices of their newly elected president Jean Bédard, M.E.A. took an important technological leap. The association wanted to create more clout among its employees and its members by re-designing a website which until then had mainly been used as an internal tool. All department heads were asked to contribute by developing content. More than a site re-design; the task required developing a portal, a doorway to the association’s multiple applications. This spawned multiple new possibilities for M.E.A.

M.E.A. brought a particular challenge as 1,300 full-time employees and 4,000 part-time employees spread among the ports of Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal and Trois- Rivières must work at different sites at each of the ports. The association wanted employees be dispatched effortlessly to their daily sites.

Developing custom CMS's

M.E.A’s business development team currently utilises Java based software tools to give its members access to its online data. The association was looking for a company capable of developing a website that would interact with already existing authentication systems developed in Java, but more notably with web technologies capable of interfacing a site with Java based security and authentication systems. The association turned to HPJ Solutions as they had properly identified the association’s needs and in doing so, proposed to conduct a comparative study of the principal CMS’s on the market.

“HPJ Solutions presented a detailed study of everything that exists on the market”, explains Manon Gervais, Director of TIC Services and the Dispatch Center. “Thanks to this study, we concluded that Java was an excellent content management tool, and Joomla fit perfectly with our needs. Our needs were clear: we wanted to re-design our site and to make it into a portal. We wanted the content management system to be accessed easily so that our TIC team could develop specific components. Our budget wouldn’t allow us to buy a complete CMS. We also needed to manage multiple languages. Finally, it needed to be modular and also intuitive since our users aren’t programmers.”

Another important challenge with the business specifications was that the new site had to be ready for the summer. This gave HPJ Solutions three months complete the graphical design, the CMS, the dynamic graphics, the flash banners, the development of advanced components and the integration of internal data with the portal. “HPJ Solutions respected our schedule and was swift in developing the architecture for the site.” adds Manon Gervais.

“Throughout the project, HPJ Solutions demonstrated its expertise, says Manon Gervais. Firstly, the comparative study reassured us in our selection of the CMS for this job. The team also consulted us on security issues and helped us select the right authentication technology. The structure they developed for the site meets our needs perfectly. Of equal importance, HPJ Solutions provided all of the support documentation that we need to continue developing our site. HPJ Solutions continues to support us. They have established themselves as a real partner for us.”



The Maritime Employers Association promoted the site to its employees and its members. The compliments were affluent. The site is also used for transmitting documents and to grant access to statistics compiled by M.E.A. This lightens the transfer of information and makes it more readily available. “We have met our objectives with respect to visibility”, assures Manon Gervais. “The site sheds some light on M.E.A. and the fact that it supports its members. Thanks to the site, people see that they can call on our expertise to help with regard to workplace health and safety; it helps us promote our know-how.

The Advantages of the M.E.A. Portal

The portal is based on a CMS built from open source code supported by a very active community on the web:

• CMS stands for Content Management System. All of the content (articles, press releases, communications) uploaded to the site is easily accessible and can be modified by M.E.A. teams via the administrator interface. Once the site is live, it can be updated easily by anyone with little or no programming experience. This allows users to concentrate on evolving content and structure.
• The fact that the CMS is developed using open source code means that users can access an immense pool of talent and modules via forums and articles. With this said, HPJ Solutions can propose regular updates to M.E.A. in order to improve functionality and security.

The site contains numerous sections specific to M.E.A. activities: charts on the homepage representing the number of orders and workforce shortages by port and various tables containing a list of information used by employers/employees and members of M.E.A. (committee meeting minutes, state of negotiations past or present, list of complaints and arbitration, job availabilities, calendar management and special events, workforce management, etc.) All of this information is generated from a section specifically created in the administrative part of the site. Since they began using this section, M.E.A. maintains complete control on information presented in each of the tables. Moreover, an authentication system restricts access to the site’s information in function of the user’s status (employee, employer, member), his assigned port (Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Trois-Rivières), and the port company he belongs to. Each table contains filters that allow quick and easy access to desired information.

The site also hosts Javascript components that make the site visually appealing (home page charts, member directory, modules, press releases, and communications). Users consequently have access to a lot of content without having to wait for the current page to reload.

The site is interfaced with M.E.A.’s authentication systems. When a user opens a session, he is first authenticated in the global authentication system, then by personal information pertinent to the user (type of account, assigned port, company, etc.) This allows M.E.A. to maintain and update the user list and manage their access rights on the site as well as on other systems, and all of this from one place.

These specific components were all possible because the CMS is built from open source code. Numerous modifications were made at the core of the system to better adapt it to M.E.A.’s needs.



Finally, the CMS allows for modular development: when M.E.A. requires a change on one part of the site, it is easy to implement without impacting other sections of the site.



The last element was to optimize the site. A list of action items was undertaken to increase the sites page rank on the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. One of which consisted of creating a URL for each page that was representative of the content on that page. For instance: http://mea.ca/en/home.html or http://mea.ca/en/news-and-publications/communiques.html.

Special attention was given to site performance. Because of its use by dockworkers and employers, the site registers peak connection hours (early morning, early evening) during which slowdowns and connection problems are not acceptable. From the onset, the site responds quickly and is not affected by slowdowns irrespective of the page requested.