Topic 1: Impact of Leadership and Project Management in  Naval Ship Construction - Malaysia Context  

SYNOPSIS SPEAKER 1   

Decades have passed, and Malaysia is still struggling with managing naval warships construction locally, plagued by delays and cost overruns. As an avenue for what appears to be a solution, multi-billion-dollar projects are awarded to foreign shipbuilders abroad at tax-payers expense and more Ringgit flowing out of the country. The speaker shall offer some insight into concepts that may be adopted along the lines of project management combined with steadfast leadership conviction and competency that may offer some successful way forwards for future ship building project

BIODATA OF SPEAKER 1

First Admiral (Ing.) Hj Ahmad Murad bin Hj Omar was born in Pontian, Johor, on 2 January 1955. He began his distinguished career after joining the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) as an Engineering Cadet in 1974, serving the nation for 33 years until 2007. He holds a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from UTM, MSc in Strategic Studies from UKM, MSc in Business Engineering Management from the University of Warwick (UK), and an Honorary PhD in Technology from UMT.

A respected professional engineer and Fellow of The Institution of Engineers, Malaysia (IEM), Admiral Murad also serves as a Council Member of the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM), where he chairs key committees addressing engineers’ welfare and public outreach. Internationally, he is a Fellow and Honorary Vice President for life of IMarEST (UK) and a Chartered Engineer (CEng) with the UK Engineering Council.
Currently, he is the Executive Chairman of OMAHAMS Corp Sdn Bhd, a marine engineering consultancy. His extensive expertise spans defence, marine, and engineering leadership, continuing to inspire excellence and professional growth in Malaysia’s engineering community.


Topic 2 : The Role Of Project  Management in Project Financing  

SYNOPSIS SPEAKER 2   

Project Owners, Developers and Contractors frequently seek external funding or financing to execute their projects in addition to their own internal resources. In the process of applying such funds from financial lending institutions, such as Commercial Banks or proper Development Funding Institutions, the assessment for such funding will consider primarily commercial feasibility and technical viability.

Commercial feasibility relates to the marketability and asset life cashflow which ultimately leads to the profitability of the venture. Whereas the technical viability relates to 2 main components ; i.e. the Technological (or Built Asset) Performance and the Project Delivery Success (or the Project Management constraint of Cost and Time).

The Role of Project Management also extends beyond the financing application process as usually during the financing there will be a condition for the project to maintain a healthy state in terms of cost and schedule in order for loan disbursement to be continued during the project execution as this is usually a contractual condition in the project financing agreement with the lending institution.

For both stages of the project financing process above – loan application and loan disbursement – project management plays a significant role to ensure that only projects with merit that have a good likelihood to successfully complete will be considered by such financing institutions.

This talk will briefly touch on the project management elements when assessing the merits of such ventures to ensure that the critical resource of funding is optimally and efficiently utilized for the both private and more importantly public development projects.


BIODATA OF SPEAKER 2

Ir. Faizal A. Sanusi has served the Project Management Technical Division in IEM since 2005, including as its Chairman in 2012.

He has a BSc in Civil Engineering from the George Washington University, USA in 1988 and an MBA from Open University, Malaysia in 2005.

His engineering and project management experience spans across the oil & gas and building industry since he began his career 30 years ago. In his career, he has performed various roles ranging from design engineer, resident engineer, project engineer, project manager and project advisor for a myriad of engineering projects – civil Infrastructure works, commercial buildings including an intelligent office institutional building, gas processing plants, offshore gas pipeline installations and offshore gas producing platforms. He also challenged himself as an entrepreneur in the business of facilities management for oil and gas on-shore installations and has provided trainings in various project management topics to the Royal Malaysian Navy and private commercial property developers.

Some of his notable career highlights as follows:

1. Senior Vice President/ Head of Technical Advisory, Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Bhd
2. Project Advisor and Project Services Manager for Oil & Gas Exploration & Production MNCs
3. Project Services Division Head for a local Offshore Oil & Gas Service Provider
4. Project Manager for the Malaysian Securities Commission 4 star intelligent building project
5. Director of a local Facilities Management company overseeing Oil & Gas O&M projects

Ir. Faizal is currently employed as the Technical Advisory Head of Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Bhd (BPMB) providing in-house technical advisory services on Malaysian development projects funded/facilitated by BPMB.