SYNOPSIS

This presentation will start with the definition of what is tendering and how it relates to the subsequent project management aspect. This talk on tendering will cover decision-making, risk management and the future costing of bids. The overall presentation will be broken down into strategic, tactical and operational issues that will be faced by all companies. This will be done by providing a simple but comprehensive framework with which to address the tendering issues to the attendee's requirement for staff retention, corporate profitability and stakeholders value enhancement.
Among the issues that will be addressed will be the organizational overheads in carrying out tendering activities. This will be compared and contrasted against the management business models to verify the accepted industry practices. The sequence of events in carrying out a tendering process will be addressed next. This will clearly demonstrate that, while the industry practices may seem to deviate from “common sense” and academics, there are solid reasons for doing so. This is a case of accepted practices adapting 'theoretical notions' to real-world business profitability. Most of the major tendering issues will be dealt with, which includes costing, deadlines etc, among others. Flow charts highlighting the presenter’s perception of how the tendering activities should be carried out in an organization will be examined. This will cover the various engineering and tendering disciplines coordinating their work and produce deliverables that will holistically address the tender bid requirements.

The documentation that goes into a properly addressed tender will be the next area of concern. This includes addressing the level of details in the tendering specifications and the repercussions of not doing so. It will also address the minor design activities that might be required during the tendering processes. The operational phase of the tendering activities will be illustrated with a numerical worked example where wrong approaches to the tendering process will be shown to result in “wrong” outcomes that seemingly and logically, as being perceived as correct. The presentation will highlight the relationship between the very experienced tendering executives and those who double up as site project engineers. It will highlight some of the damaging errors made by Malaysian companies that are detrimental to everyone's short and long term interests. Young graduates coming out of Universities 'blurred' and those who have been retrenched without understanding why, will be given an insight into employers' perspective, and the means of solving their problems and dilemmas.


BIODATA OF SPEAKER

He has a wide area of (electrical) engineering experience in the Oil & Gas, Building Services, Utility, and Mining. He has designed in a USD 3 billion dollar Saudi Arabian King Saud University project. He has a high passion for cross-discipline applications, automation, advanced information systems, tendering and project management. With a formal education in Electrical Engineering from Monash University, Australia, 1989, S. Vignaeswaran has gone on to obtain his Masters of Science in Business Information Systems / Information Technology from University of Keele, United Kingdom. His MSc (BIS/IT) thesis in 2002 was on the development of a Web-based SCADA system.