Monthly Archives: November 2013

Organizational Behavior Challenges of a Junior Project Manager

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In 2010 during my employment in the capacity of Business Development Manager with National Central Cooling Company (PJSC) – “Tabreed” in Abu Dhabi – United Arab Emirates I was provided with an opportunity to internally lead one of the biggest bid submissions in the company’s history; an estimated $270m project.  Tabreed provided district cooling utility services in which the company financed, owned, operated and charged for the use of chilled water by the end customers.  The project in question was government sponsored entailing the development of 4 completely new commercial / residential medium rise buildings planned to house more than 100,000 occupants.  The district cooling aspect of the project required a total of 120,000 Tons of cooling capacity (Tabreed’s installed cooling capacity at the time was 500,000) through 4 district cooling plants and associated network at an estimated cost of AED 1 billion (USD 270 million).  Announcement of this project and some preliminary planning work took place even before I joined Tabreed in 2008. Tabreed, especially, the engineering department had worked substantially on this lead, providing the client with a number of preliminary designs, specifications and advisory work.  However, it was, like most big government sponsored projects a bureaucratic nightmare when it came to contract negotiations and decision making; for a long time it seemed that there was no traction or progress.  When the financial crunch hit in late 2008, there were rumors that the project was shelved; however, it picked up again in late 2009 with a modified commercial and development structure regarding the district cooling system. The project was now based on the Design Build Operate and Maintain (DBOM) model which basically transformed Tabreed to a contractor and operator rather than an owner and service provider, something that Tabreed has never previously undertook on such a large scale.  Hence, it was a learning experience for the company as a whole and required a great deal of internal discussion, collaboration and input to mitigate the risks involved.

Although this setup was more suitable to all district cooling providers as it took away the financing burden it raised additional constructional and operational risks.  All of these issues instilled an uneasy feeling within the company with the general feeling that this project will not take off.  Hence the project was not on the priority list especially for the O&M and Projects departments both of whom had a great deal of ongoing challenges to deal with.

On another note, and to give this project a political dimension, Tabreed’s board of directors contained a number of individuals who were also members of other Abu Dhabi Government affiliated companies that were involved in this development. 

My director at the time was handling this project and I was involved peripherally.  This changed in mid-2010 when my director decided to appoint me the point of contact and junior project manager within the commercial department.

I started to review previous correspondences, presentations, held discussions with Tabreed’s O&M, projects and legal departments to better understand the project.  After a couple of weeks I was able to draw a clearer picture of the project and its requirements.  With the assistance of my director, we created a non-hierarchical task team including myself, my director and co-workers and directors from the legal, projects and O&M departments. 

Other than negotiating and understanding the client’s requirements and risks involved, one of my biggest challenges was to get my co-workers and other department heads motivated, to respond within the deadlines and be clear on what they can accept and what they can’t.  In short, my challenge was to get everyone involved to push together in the same direction.

Relying heavily on their inputs, I had to create some movement and progress.  At times, I would reason with my co-workers that since this was a governmental project and that most of Tabreed’s board of directors were in one way or another connected to the Abu Dhabi Government affiliated companies they took special interest in this project.  Which meant that a failure to deliver on this project would put all of us in their black books; however, on the other hand if we did succeed in delivering on this project we will all be recognized for our efforts.  At other times, I reasoned especially with my Projects Department colleagues that if we end up winning this project, it will be bring heaps of benefits to Tabreed not to mention that such a project will keep them busy and sustain them for 3-4 years to come at a time when Tabreed was cutting down on its overheads.  It was a daunting mission, as I often found myself caught in the middle of sharp differences in points of views especially between the O&M and Projects directors that would grind our progress to a standstill.  Each director was trying to safe guard or minimize the risk placed on his department at the expense of the other.  At times my director and I were able to challenge their arguments and points of view to reach a consensus; however, at other times especially when a much larger risk was involved we were not able to play the role of mediators.  Hence, my director and I increased the frequency of the periodic meetings involving the departments’ directors with our senior management to keep things in check and leverage the senior management authority and conflict resolution capabilities.

Although direct negotiations with the client and client representative task team was led by my director, it was my responsibility to keep him well informed of progress made internally and contribute my perspectives during these discussions.  At one point I realized that the client’s project manager who was leading the group of client’s representatives which was comprised of Westerns and Arabs was not all too clear on how our financial pricing went about as his experience was mainly technical.  With the approval of my director and CEO, I went about meeting with him one on one, running him through our financial pricing model and linking it to the risks involved in undertaking this project so that he would have a better appreciation of our suggestions and remarks. This helped ease the tensions during our meetings and assisted us in reaching common grounds on a lot of thorny issues.

In the end, we did submit our final proposal on time after gaining our senior management and board of directors’ approval.  I also found, later on, that our proposal was largely accepted by the client’s task team via unofficial discussions I had with the project manager.  However, a couple of months after the submission, it was officiated by the government of Abu Dhabi that this project has been indefinitely postponed.

Nevertheless, this experience remains one that I am fond of the most, one that helped me grow as a professional and an individual.  Taking on such a complex bid process I have learned a lot in a variety of business management fields: legal, commercial/financial, customer service, project management, risks and mitigation, negotiations, time management, prioritization and most importantly organizational behavior.  In retrospect I have gained a huge respect for organizational behavior from this experience.  A company can possess all the analytic and “brain” power to handle complex projects however it will all be in vain if it doesn’t possess a good handle on organizational behavior and internal communication aspects!

Lessons Learned on Risk & Initiative Taking within an Oil & Gas Experience

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Most of our life decisions are based on trade offs e.g. leaving the security of a stable income and employment for the promise of better employment, growth and development opportunities post an MBA program.  How do we decide on these trade offs?  How do we know that we will be better off after we trade short term goals for long term one?  For some decisions its obvious; however, for many its not that clear.  They all carry a certain degree of risk, the way we approach risk has a lot to say on whether our decisions will turn out to be good.  One key aspect is in taking calculated risks, albeit, each individual has a different level of risk tolerance.  Another would be managing expectations and if, as in most cases, the outcome of your decisions depends on how well you interact with other people or individuals interrelationship and communication skills become vital.

During my employment period with Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCIC), an Oil & Gas contractor, I held the position of progress engineer.  My task was to develop, maintain and issue weekly construction progress reports for the estimated USD 600 million liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant project.  At the time CCIC was building the largest LNG trains in the world on behalf of the main contractor, Technip/Chiyoda JV, and ultimately the Qatar Gas, Royal Dutch Shell and Conocophillips owner consortium.

At the time, the company was in the early phases of mobilization / early works and well behind schedule.  There was around 500 employees, instead of the forecast 1,500 with an estimated 8,000 employees required at peak. To make things more challenging, due to the rate of growth and developments in the region the company had to rely extensively on new employees the majority of which were either with less than 2 years of work experience or new to the oil & gas industry (I included).

With the assistance of an IT colleague, I have developed the system in three weeks, taking into consideration lessons learned from a similar nearby project, understanding the functionality and responsibilities of the departments who would be providing input to the progress system, automating inputs as much as possible a means to reduce human error and producing the work breakdown structure (WBS) of the whole project.  As I came to realize later, this was the easy part of my task!

Right from the start, feedback was inaccurate and sporadic, especially those generated by the construction department.  This created an administrative and planning nightmare, not to mention confidence issues with our client.  My department’s head intended to request reprehension measures against the individuals responsible for the inaccuracy and delay in reporting.  Sensing that this would complicate matters and make my mission even harder; I was able to convince him to grant me time to try to fix this issue on my own.  I was fully aware, that if I failed to rectify this matter, it would adversely effect my chances of employment progression, increased responsibilities and exposure as well as damage my credibility.

Taking the initiative, I decided to intensify personal relationships with the individuals in charge of providing the required progress inputs.  I frequented their work stations more, personally delivering and running them through the forms I needed to be filled.  At the beginning I have assisted in filling out the forms and joined site progress inspections.  Adopting this approach benefited my progress reporting exercise greatly; I was able to improve the reporting process by listening to their inputs, suggestions and by integrating the theoretical and practical aspects of progress reporting.  More importantly, I understood that the construction teams believed that successful construction projects could be delivered through site work only.  Hence, they underestimated the importance of paper work, reporting and the administrative aspects of the construction industry.

Throughout the coming weeks I was able to highlight the importance of providing accurate inputs in a timely manner through personal discussions and by conducting a group presentation on the subject.  I reasoned to them that through proper progress reporting, their hard work on site could be better presented to our senior management and client, provide input to efficiently plan the rest of the construction activities, and form the basis for payments from our client which will eventually have an effect on their bonus schemes.

My approach had noticeable effects on their input, I was congratulated by my department’s head and it made me feel self fulfilled.  During the rest of my employment period, I was tasked with ever challenging exercises, gained an employment grade increase and a satisfactory bonus.

This experience made me realize that one needs to take control and ownership of his duties, not be afraid to be an initiator and take on calculated risks in order to reach self fulfillment, results and employment progress.  Furthermore, owing to the diversity of people and backgrounds I had to interact with, I gained a deeper appreciation of diversity and improved my conflict resolution ability.  Finally, understanding the root cause of the problem is the basis for formulating efficient and successful solutions to any problem.