Tony skinner 00:03
Hi, and welcome to the podcast for podcastmybusiness.com.au on Apple podcast, Google podcast and Spotify. And even I’ve found myself on Audible. I don’t know how or why didn’t ask for it, but I’m there somehow I show up on Google, which is great. So this morning we’ve got Mooeen weaned from global empowering solutions.com.au. How are you Moein?
Moein 00:34
Hi, Tony. Well, thank you very much for having me. I’m fine. I’m well. 
Tony skinner 00:38
Okay, that’s cool. Um, so let us know a little bit more about global empowering solutions,
00:47
right? Well, basically, I have my own consulting business called Global impairments, solutions. It’s a company dedicated to helping and supporting consulting firms, engineering consulting firms and contractors to basically provide a better service to their clients, position themselves for project success, enhance their good reputation, avoid project failure, and achieve higher levels of project efficiency and profitability. In fact, you know, I’m sometimes referred to as the project management doctor.
Because I work with business leaders to carry out a health check of their project management systems, procedures and their staff technical and non technical skill sets, and then develop a solution of that prescription. All the aim of providing a better service to their clients and achieving higher levels of project profitability. And also, I have an online course or me online courses, but one of which is, I’m right now. Promoting is the key to project management success.
Tony skinner 02:00
Yeah, I did see your thing about the project management doctor. So there’s all sorts of things that that pops up. And so I guess, you work on very large projects, like huge projects that should have professional engineers, but I guess they don’t tend to have the right Professional Engineers at times.
Moein 02:28
Yes, I’ve actually seen a lot of projects struggle, because they haven’t had the right team on board. I mean, I’ve seen projects go pear shaped, because for example, a great designer who was great at designing was promoted into a project management position, without having the proper training. And also there’s far too much unnecessary pressure and stresses in the construction industry, because people are generally not good at project management. So this is why I actually set up my companies. I thought, after seeing so many products go wrong, and learning from those things. I thought I could help.
Tony skinner 03:15
Yeah, and I mean, that’s the key thing is any business, you got to have the right people, and they gotta be professional. And as we’ve just discovered, even this week, a doctor overdosed the COVID-19 vaccine, and then later on, discovered didn’t have the right training and the right qualifications. So I guess that would have just going to call it that would also come down to arrogance of some professionals will look, you know, I’m a professional, I don’t need to be told what to do. I’m, you know, I don’t need to be checked.
Moein 03:45
oYes, yes, absolutely. This is this comes down to, you know, some people believe that they can do things because they’ve done things before a certain way. And they don’t think that they need to, for example, plan. Why do I need to plan, I’ve done this before I can do it, they think they can just wing it. But in fact, if to me, if you don’t plan, or if you don’t have a project plan, you actually are not managing your projects will be the key task of a project manager is to deliver the project plan that is agreed at the beginning of the job with your senior management. So it’s a quite a formal thing that needs to be followed that project plan.
So but many companies, they may have a form for project plans, but many project managers don’t follow them or the teams or the management, don’t insist on them being used on all projects, which is a shame, because they lose, they could damage the reputation that way they could actually lose a lot of money that way because they are not being efficient. They may not catch all the variations that happen on their projects and so on. So, you know, it’s, although it takes a bit of time to plan and some people feel that if the people Planning, they’re just sitting there. They don’t feel they’re achieving much. But in fact that planning is the one that’s going to basically help them have a successful project later on.
Tony skinner 05:12
was like, it wasn’t the old story that if it’s a bit out on one side, say centimeter out on one side of the breach, by the time I get set aside of the bridge, it’s much more than one centimeter out.
Moein 05:22
Yes, absolutely. But yeah, but I mean, to me, a, for example, a design or consulting firm or a construction contractor, basically make their money on the projects they complete successfully, you know, and the more efficient they are at delivering their projects, the higher their net profit and client satisfaction as well, basically, we, you’ve got four key protagonists in any project. One is the external client that you’re doing the project for.
The other one is the internal client, which is your bosses and your manager, your where your line manager. Third one is the is actually your, your team, you know, a dissatisfied team won’t give you the best. And fourth one is the community community that’s going to receive your project, if you have, if you have any of these four protagonists, not satisfied or disenchanted or unhappy, then you actually don’t have a resounding success. So I always, basically, of my businesses model is that to successfully deliver a project, you need two key things.
One is a great team, which basically, that team has got to be engaged in the success of the business, and goes the extra mile to make sure the organization is successful, and also the technically skilled to do the work. And second is a great set of procedures and systems that every member has been trained on to follow. So if you have a great system, and you have a great team, you have a far greater chance of having a profitable project and having a happy client.
Tony skinner 07:04
Yeah, and is one example that we’d like hearing your story. So a specific example, about a project that you worked on a $10 billion project that you saved $900 million on, can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Moein 07:18
Yes, yes. Well, obviously, it wasn’t just me, it was me and my team, I lead that initiative. And I obviously, didn’t do that alone. Yes, basically, I use the value engineering process to save around 900 million Aussie dollars on a $10 billion project. Basically, this was a mega sized infrastructure project. And the chairman of this particular organization that so the owner project, told me and my team that our current cost estimate for the infrastructure elements of this program, not project is about $10 million, this is too high, we need to optimize the design and do whatever we can to reduce the construction costs. So my team and I began to go through the concept designs and master plan and so on to prepare, has been prepared by the consultants on this program to reduce the cost of the project without compromising the quality and safety of the people, the project and the job itself. So we use the value engineering process, which basically provided the tools to go back to first principle, and determine a list of value drivers for the project, you may ask what the value drivers. Basically, these are the values that drive the project. For example, in an airport project, for example, a passenger experience is key. 
So that is one of the value drivers. Or maybe, you know, cost is an issue if you have a limited budget, and that becomes a value driver as well. So once you’ve got the value drivers list, you’ve determined that after reviewing the entire project, then you can score you have formulas, and you have ways of determining your score, your current designs score in terms of these value drivers. And then you see okay, we achieved x now how can we improve that we come up with various alternative solutions to maybe basically to improve your your score. And then once you’ve improved the score to the level that you’re interested in, then you can update the design. But just to put it simply, my team and I have spent the best part of a year to review the design provided to question the validity of every assumption detail. And if you’re supposed to based on the value drivers, check the design to ensure the consultants were not excessively over designing the various elements of the work such as the number of lanes of a road and do we really need a service or you tunnel at certain locations? Or can we bury the services directly in the ground as opposed to constructing a very expensive utility tunnel? Are we over designed the intersections of roads, and so on? So we reduce the construction cost by 900 million Ozzie dollar, but just purely going through every nut and bolt and asking, Is this really necessary? How does this contribute to the value drivers? Now,
Tony skinner 10:30
I always like to ask for tips. And you know, I’ll give you the heads up. So that’s good. So what are some tips for us in business on a general basis that we can learn from your engineering.
Moein 10:44
But I think the tip that I have actually is, is not only relevant to engineering industry, on constructions, it’s actually for anybody who’s post submits a proposal or a quote, or a price for a tender or a bid. So when you get invited to bid for a project, before you start spending any time on your proposal, spend some time doing a assessment called go nogo assessment. The aim of this assessment is to determine if you really should bid for the project, do you really have a chance of winning it? You know, if 4050 other companies if it’s an open tender that 40 companies are bidding for this particular project? 10? was what what was the likelihood of you winning it? And if it’s next to nothing?
Why should you spend your time bidding for this? You may wish to go for it, but at least you’re aware of the the challenges. Is this a good client? Good payer bad payer difficult to work with? It was a difficult client that pays late and which impacts with cash flow and the awkward to work with? Why would you want to work on that project? You know, you know, when you make a reasonable profit on this privilege, the kind of questions that you have to ask yourself during the go nogo assessment, that you make a reasonable profit on this project? If you don’t, why should you bid for it? Does your team have the skill set to deliver this project?
If you don’t, you have access to sub consultants or subcontractors who can do this work as part of your team or partners that will partner with you. If If you can do all of it, go ahead and bet if you can’t do all of it, then can you find the people to help you. And if you can’t find those people? Should you really bid for this on next is if your team isn’t available. If you for example, you have the capacity right now to to, for example, build 10 homes now, in a year. Now, suddenly, you’re faced with so many bids. And if you accept all the bids that come through your door, you may end up doing 14 properties or houses in a year, and you simply don’t have the staff to put on those projects, do you really have the time to work on this project, because if you accept all tenders that are available to you. And if you secure all of them, then obviously, you have disappointed few of the protagonists I referred to earlier that they are the external client, they won’t be happy if you’re late. If you sort of botch it up if you sort of make mistakes, because you’re rushing through. You can’t accept everything that comes through your door.
Because I know a company, if you believe a lot whose hit rate was one in 40, which basically meant that they were submitting 40 bids or giving 40 quotes before they were able to secure one. So I had to ask him, Do you do a go? Go no go assessment, because you can weed out the undesirable projects and avoid wasting your time preparing a bid that you either don’t have a chance of winning, or you don’t want to actually win because the client is difficult to work with. So can you imagine how many working hours are wasted on the 39 bids that they were not successful on? Amazing? 
Tony skinner 14:09
Yeah. And I think that’s a key principle that many in business don’t realize, you have to know when to say no. And you have to realize you know what your capacity is I’ve been requested for a quote for a University here in Sydney. And I didn’t respond in the first round because I thought not really for us. And they got back in touch with us look, we’d really appreciate the quote.
Okay, now I’m going to start doing some work on it. Send us some questions to clarify some points before I do the quote. And I’m waiting to hear back from them. So that could be one way of doing it as well. Let’s just wait and see what happens. Rather than always desperately rushing out there to do everything and universities can be good or bad. Okay, they’ve got money, but they’re not the best payers on the face of the planet either. So Yeah, you’ve got to balance everything. And it’s really that’s a fantastic tip. Mooeen, so I really appreciate that. Okay. All right. Well, thanks very much for your time. I know we covered a lot. There’s so much to cover when it comes to your particular topic with engineering and whatever. But yeah, thank you very much for your time.
Moein 15:19
Thank you for having me. Thanks,