15/01/2023 Ziad Al-basir Cost Control, Planning & Control, Portfolio Management, PPMO, Project Cost Controls, Project Portfolio Management Office

Bidding Project Portfolio System

Winning new projects nowadays is very tough considering the market conditions and high competition. To compete successfully, businesses must have a clear understanding of their industry, the competition, and their customers. They must also create and implement strategies to differentiate themselves from the competition. This can include having a unique product offering, providing superior customer service, offering competitive pricing, and utilizing effective marketing and advertising tactics. Additionally, businesses must stay on top of industry trends and be agile in responding […]

15/01/2023 Ziad Al-basir Cost Control, EPMO, EPPM, Planning & Control, Portfolio Management, Project Cost Controls, Project Portfolio Management Office

Cost Management For Contractors

Cost management is more crucial to the contractors than other parties during contract execution. Some contractors are still in the dilemma on working on huge unsecured excel sheets and late reports from site and misalignment between the construction team and the head office departments which support and monitor the project. EVM system is on tool to monitor the cost and profit on real time every single day using Primavera P6 EPPM system. Earned Value Management (EVM) is a widely used […]

29/06/2018 Ziad Al-basir Bidding & Tendering

Can We Increase The Bidding Price Now?

Global oil prices hit 11-year low on Jan 2016 with around $30 per barrel dropping form $115 on June 2014. Last month May 2018, it rose to $80 per barrel for the first time since 2014. The year to date average price for Brent oil is close to $70 per barrel. Historically, over the duration of 2002 to 2008, the price of oil rose from $20 to $100+ which helped the construction industry to boom to historical record. Consequently, can […]

13/05/2018 Ziad Al-basir Strategic Planning

Do you have a VSP?

Project based organisations (PBO) visionary leaders must have a Visual Strategic Portfolio (VSP) within their enterprise project portfolios management (EPPMS) system. Visualisation of the SP means visualisation of your ultimate goals. The current or near future goals are business as usual. It doesn’t reflect the main existence of your organisation. Another reason to have the VSP is that the visionary leaders know they will face many challenges to manoeuvre defining initial targets to make it easy to manage. However, not […]

22/04/2018 Ziad Al-basir Cost Control

Does Client’s Contract Help To Share Resources To Reduce Project’s Cost?

The most used method to manage projects is by considering each project as a separate cost centre where you have full budget and resources allocated to deliver the project. This project might extend form a day to years. Here it comes the difficulties that, it will cost the project more if you will consider a cost for a machine or a person as a full-time for the project even he/she/it will operate not full time. For example, an asphalt paving […]

17/04/2018 Ziad Al-basir PMO

Project Portfolio Implementation Check List

Project Portfolio Management is a dynamic ongoing process of selecting and delivering projects on a shared portfolio model to achieve the maximum benefits realized from the available resources to deliver the organization vision on a long term and the assigned business plans and targets on the short term (monthly, quarterly and annually). Project based organizations (PBO) are managing portfolios, programs and projects. However, are they delivering it to the maximum efficiency. In most organizations, they would have big load every […]

03/04/2018 Ziad Al-basir Bidding & Tendering

Are You Burning Your Cash Flow?

Project Based Organizations (PBO) are struggling when market is slow on two stages. The first is what to bid stage and the later is the bidding’s markup price stage. They feel the pressure more on the later especially if they lost many bids recently and they feel like the year is finishing by burning the overhead cash flow with no results. The mark up price includes the hard cost, the soft cost and the profit. Hard cost is the estimated […]

28/03/2018 Ziad Al-basir PMO

Do You Have Portfolio Analysis Skills? – Part 1

Project Portfolio Analysis is so sample for a trained person. So for some of us, it will be very easy to understand the charts and tables very fast and for some, it might be new skill to gain. So please for the trained ones, give some insights to what the charts and table data are telling us. In a fast track and busy time for management, they would like to have a tool to tell them a lot by one […]

12/03/2018 Ziad Al-basir Bidding & Tendering

Project Cash Flow Forecast, How Much Details You Need During Bidding?

In this article I will discuss the contractors cash flow worst case scenario and how much big risk they have to manage to have a positive cash flow. Some of the figures might give you a shock. The numbers are logical based on the provided works progress percentage. Construction preliminaries are from 10% to 15% globally in most countries according to International construction market survey 2017 published by Turner & Townsend which includes 43 markets around the world. The average […]

22/02/2018 Ziad Al-basir Business Transformation

Are You Ready For The New Construction Technology Disruption?

I was privileged to be invited to two important innovation events happened on the same day which I tried to divide my time between both of them. Because the subject and the type of participants on both. They are linked because they are about new solutions and innovations. Let me say that getting knowledge about new trends and innovations opens new prospective always in my mind on how I think and how I adopt new business models. The challenge of […]

18/01/2018 Ziad Al-basir Business Transformation

Carillion Collapse What Went Wrong ?

UK Construction giant Carillion, the second largest construction company with 200 years’ work experience (19,000 employee in UK with 49,000 in all over the world) announced on 15th Jan 2018, that it has to enter into compulsory liquidation with immediate effect after they couldn’t secure a dial with government and banks to cover their £1.5 billion debt pile. The negative impact of the news is not only to their shareholders, current employees, and previous employees (on their pension payments), it […]

12/12/2017 Ziad Al-basir Planning & Control

What type of Project Controls System Fit You More in Functional Organization Environment?

We published many articles about PMO and EPPM because it is the best model for Project Based Organisations (PBO) for best results on such continuously changing and competitive market. However, many organizations are still using traditional functional structure including project controls departments. Therefore, the question which persist in such work environment “What type of Project Controls System Fit You More in Functional Organization Environment?” Although, the training workshop includes a lot more. we are happy to share with you the […]

10/10/2017 Ziad Al-basir PMO

Who Plan and Deliver the PMO / EPMO ?

Most organizations plan and implement their strategic initiatives all the time. However, delivering it faces difficulties and even failure. One of the important initiatives for government, developers and contractors is the PMO implementation Initiative which is a restructuring initiative which make it more difficult to plan and implement. The good news I read in the recent PMI Pulse of The Profession 2017 report, is that: ” We have learned in the past: that when proven project, program, and portfolio management […]

03/07/2017 Ziad Al-basir Business Transformation

What Went Wrong?

One of the most difficult situations is when a decision maker faces the three Ws (WWW) What Went Wrong? The situation becomes more devastating for the investors who invested billions. One example of this is one of the world’s biggest mining company who had put one of their big assets in USA up for sale in October 2014 after a slump in oil prices. The company bought the assets from Chesapeake Energy Corp. in 2011 for $4.75 billion but was […]

26/06/2017 Ziad Al-basir Business Transformation

Do You Find It Difficult To Get Your Organisation Financial Report?

Many organizations growing very fast. They expand their business year after year using the same systems they started with until they find difficulties to report where they stand financially. They wake up with the fact that there is no proper records not just to use internally but more importantly to provide for shareholders and auditors as credible reports. The finance department panics before every due report date to collect the needed data from the different departments. It becomes big headache […]

25/06/2017 Ziad Al-basir PMO

Why PMO Is The Solution Not To Fail?

Why PMO is the solution not to fail? Project management office is a new organization structure to deliver projects. It is not a coordinating efforts by different departments to deliver projects. It is a new organization with new vision, mission and goals. It is a new culture created to rid off the bad records, prioritizing ambiguity, conflicts of authority, obstacles excuses, bottleneck and centralized decision making in the different type of organizations. Trying to build a PMO within an organization […]

03/03/2017 Ziad Al-basir Business Transformation

Retaining the Know How?

Availability of key skills comes on number 8 for business threat which makes US CEOs extremely concerned about in their organisation strategic planning (PWC 20th CEO Global Survey Report – Jan 2017). The picture becomes more concerning when another survey in USA released on 9th Feb 2017 by Willis Towers Watson research reveals that almost half of employees think they would need to change companies to advance their career. This is a high trend from 2014 Willis Towers Watson research […]

12/12/2016 Ziad Al-basir Strategic Planning Leave a comment

Projects Delivery KPIs

Projects delivery KPIs are important to measure the risks and opportunities that influence the strategic performance of projects and the team involved. The project management KPIs types could be defined mainly around the following Criteria: 1. Financial: These are typically utilized when the measure is monetary. 2. Quantitative: These are for projects where the relevant metric is not financial but is something that can be quantified numerically like time delivery. 3. Qualitative: A qualitative KPI is used when the relevant […]

10/12/2016 Ziad Al-basir Strategic Planning

Do You Have A Competitive Mechanism?

In challenging market where the pressure to win new contracts to maintain the targeted profit becomes a survival risk, management tends to make very tough decisions. Some of these decisions are around cutting costs. Some are around increasing efficiency and some are about new thinking and new operation model. However, success is a habit. It is a defined process and systems. It is not a change forced to do. Therefore, when we study the successful models for big companies we […]

04/11/2016 Ziad Al-basir PMO

How to Manage Projects’ Design Shared Resources – Part 2

Goal: To demonstrate how to manage shared design resources. Level: Intermediate. Direct Users: Planning Engineers, Design Managers, Design Coordinators, and Program / Project Managers, Project Control Manager, PMO Manager and Portfolio Managers Indirect Users: CEO, COO, CFO and Directors Gained Skills Corporate Strategic Planning Resource Planning and Management Project Cost Planning and Management Resource Reporting Tools P6 Primavera Professional Rev 16.2 This article is a series of articles under the title How to Manage Projects’ Design Shared Resources. Please refer […]

02/11/2016 Ziad Al-basir PMO

How to Manage Projects’ Design Shared Resources ? – Part 1

17/10/2016 Ziad Al-basir Bidding & Tendering

Earthwork Tender’s Schedule – What Level of Details You Should Include in it?

The planning and scheduling of earthwork are of major importance in obtaining an efficiently bidding pricing for multibillion construction projects. To plan a schedule, the quantities of clearing, grubbing, and stripping, as well as the quantities and balancing of cuts and fills, must be calculated. Then, the most efficient type and number of pieces of earth moving equipment could be defined, the proper number of personnel assigned, and the appropriate time allocated. Earthwork computation involves the calculation of volumes or […]

04/10/2016 Ziad Al-basir Bidding & Tendering

Bidding Portfolio Process Map Framework – Decision Making Analysis

Abstract: There are difficulties to collect actual bidding cost from the different contractors records. Many contractors consider it part of the overhead and not important to calculate. Part of this difficulties is the unidentified or different bidding process methods and where the process starts and where it end? Therefore, identification of the bidding process, will help to identify its actual cost. We will discuss here only the contractors bidding process. Although, there are similarities for consultants and suppliers process with less cost expected. […]