Background
One of China’s leading electric power companies has been contracted to build a gas compressor station, which will increase the capacity of Saudi Arabia’s master gas system to 12.5 billion cubic feet per day by 2018. Owned by Saudi Aramco, Master Gas System (MGS) was constructed in the 1970’s and the current expansion, which is at Phase One, is projected for completion by the end of 2016. Phase Two will be completed at end of 2017 and Phase Three is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2017.
Challenge
MPH was working for the first time with the client who won the contract through the Out of Kingdom-In Kingdom (OOK/IK) tendering process. This method sees an overseas firm pitch for the engineering and procurement on a project in which the construction would be carried out by the company’s subsidiary registered in the country. Although the brief was very clear, MPH had to do a lot of hand holding and set processes for this project as it was the client’s first oil and gas project in Saudi Arabia. And the biggest challenge was that the entire team for the project had to be pre-approved by ARAMCO.
Approach
Processes were put in motion by MPH with a series of sessions on do’s and don’ts, immigrations rules and other logistic procedures, in coordination with the client. This helped the client immensely in planning the project and set a time frame for MPH to work from. Despite the tight deadlines, MPH managed to source the required skilled and engineering consultants and process their work visas and permits. Within the first month, MPH mobilized 10 consultants on site; the process from both the sourcing team and operations had to be well co-ordinated to ensure that every curriculum vitae that went to the client had worked on ARAMCO projects before. For the process and search to be productive, MPH harvested its database diligently and picked candidates that had the necessary experience and had worked on previous ARAMCO projects. Throughout the project the business development team coordinated the efforts by meeting decision makers in both the head office in China and locally in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. MPH successfully carried out end-to-end procedures, from resourcing the talent, work immigration package and in-country services of providing health insurance to assisting with accommodation facilitation. In addition MPH also provided payroll and taxation services to the client in Saudi Arabia.
Result
To date, MPH has deployed 27 consultants at all levels of the project, with both phase 1 and phase 2 in progress and scheduled to complete as expected the project is headed for success. The client has already bid for Phase 3 of the project and prospects for MPH are extremely good. Letters of recommendation have poured in from the client and the satisfaction bar is high. The MPH team is looking forward to providing its expertise in manpower solutions for Phase 3.
One of China’s leading electric power companies has been contracted to build a gas compressor station, which will increase the capacity of Saudi Arabia’s master gas system to 12.5 billion cubic feet per day by 2018. Owned by Saudi Aramco, Master Gas System (MGS) was constructed in the 1970’s and the current expansion, which is at Phase One, is projected for completion by the end of 2016. Phase Two will be completed at end of 2017 and Phase Three is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2017.
Challenge
MPH was working for the first time with the client who won the contract through the Out of Kingdom-In Kingdom (OOK/IK) tendering process. This method sees an overseas firm pitch for the engineering and procurement on a project in which the construction would be carried out by the company’s subsidiary registered in the country. Although the brief was very clear, MPH had to do a lot of hand holding and set processes for this project as it was the client’s first oil and gas project in Saudi Arabia. And the biggest challenge was that the entire team for the project had to be pre-approved by ARAMCO.
Approach
Processes were put in motion by MPH with a series of sessions on do’s and don’ts, immigrations rules and other logistic procedures, in coordination with the client. This helped the client immensely in planning the project and set a time frame for MPH to work from. Despite the tight deadlines, MPH managed to source the required skilled and engineering consultants and process their work visas and permits. Within the first month, MPH mobilized 10 consultants on site; the process from both the sourcing team and operations had to be well co-ordinated to ensure that every curriculum vitae that went to the client had worked on ARAMCO projects before. For the process and search to be productive, MPH harvested its database diligently and picked candidates that had the necessary experience and had worked on previous ARAMCO projects. Throughout the project the business development team coordinated the efforts by meeting decision makers in both the head office in China and locally in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. MPH successfully carried out end-to-end procedures, from resourcing the talent, work immigration package and in-country services of providing health insurance to assisting with accommodation facilitation. In addition MPH also provided payroll and taxation services to the client in Saudi Arabia.
Result
To date, MPH has deployed 27 consultants at all levels of the project, with both phase 1 and phase 2 in progress and scheduled to complete as expected the project is headed for success. The client has already bid for Phase 3 of the project and prospects for MPH are extremely good. Letters of recommendation have poured in from the client and the satisfaction bar is high. The MPH team is looking forward to providing its expertise in manpower solutions for Phase 3.