Abu Dhabi Ports Company: Project Management Report

Introduction

The Abu Dhabi Ports Company was started in 2006 through an Emiri Decree, to be a master developer of both ports and industrial sectors in the region of Abu Dhabi.

This company was started as a section of the reconstruction of the profit-making ports segment in the Emirates and was awarded the management and regulatory enactment authority over every commercial ports asset earlier possessed by the Abu Dhabi Seaports Authority (ADSA). The key accomplishments of Abu Dhabi Ports Company were the achievement of Khalifa Port and the advancement of Kizad.

By way of organisation and exploring novel options of industrial sectors, ADPC remains one of the key players that support the growth of economy in the country. This report seeks to address the projects covered by Abu Dhabi Ports Company, the manner in which they approve and manage projects, and the challenges that the company is facing.

Organisation Profile

Irrespective of the organisation there requires having a chain of authority with definite functions defined for all who join or operate with the organisation. For Khalifa Port, the recommended structure consists of Possessions, Infrastructure, and managing of Facilities set for one department or manager.

This structure could most probably fall in the arms of the Ports Operations Department, where technological services would operate as the managing agent for constructions, which would call for the support of Marine Services, among others.

Divisions Structure

Technical services

The formation of Technical Services Department for the staged and completely functional Port, considering the service requirements of Abu Dhabi Ports Company, will be an important concern because of the character of the advancement, its working structure, the magnitude, and intricacy of the advancement in addition to the number of policymakers, services entailed and human capital required.

Likewise and unavoidably, there will be unique challenges associated with the building up of the technological and infrastructure management operations that will demand careful and controlled planning and execution.

Rules of the division

Technical services division

From the range of services, there will be two major sections left for Technical services. One of these sections is the constructions that could encompass civil structures, which handle electricity and water system. The other section is Operating Security and Management Systems (OSMS) employed in the operations at the Port.

An arrangement segment could be necessary in the management of the planned operations, incoming upkeep, and repair demands that would originate from the Port, forming three service players in the Technical Services group. The leader of the team is the Technical Services manager. The Technical Services Manager has the following three engineering managers that report to him:

1. Electro-Mechanical Engineer (ME).
2. Infrastructure Engineer (IE).
3. Planning Engineer (PE).

The Planning Engineer will be accountable for external work requests, assigning duties to the suitable sections and contractors, and contriving on programmed and un-programmed operations in the Asset Management System (AMS). The Planning Engineer could as well be accountable for maintaining asset information and ensuring nouveau records are accessible for both for internal application as well as for future projects.

The Planning Group will manage the Building Management System (BMS) and examine maintenance actions. The Infrastructure Engineer will be answerable for the management of the construction and infrastructure upkeep section.

The duty of the Infrastructure Engineer will be to make sure that the programmed and the un-programmed upkeeps are carried out in a timely way and within financial requirements. In this way, the Infrastructure Engineer will be accountable for gathering management reports.

The construction maintenance contractors shall carry out the daily functions and management of the upkeep. This agreement will have the responsibility of assigning of materials and some labour to programmed and un-programmed operations.

Noteworthy accountability of the function of Infrastructure Engineer will be to carry out a visual assessment of the constructions and support foundations that shall be effected according to Service Level Agreements and Key Performance indicators under the contract. The Building Services Contract group could be made up of carpenters, masons and labourers, to mention a few.

The critical tasks of this group will be to carry out most of the programmed and un-programmed upkeep of the construction material for the constructions at the Port, including both their inside and outside surfaces.

As aforementioned, operations will be assigned to the team through the Planning Engineer and contract manager that will together with the Infrastructure Engineer, scrutinise the operations being carried out and then sign the worksheet upon reasonable conclusion.

Project portfolio management

Flow chart

The management policy for technical services rests in the organisation as a facilitator of Construction services and infrastructure. Hence, the structure of Technical Services is found in a team of facilitating departments that operate to ensure that the Port remains functional.

The science of planning, arranging, prompting, and administering resources to attain particular objectives underscores the aspects of project management.

A project denotes a temporary attempt having a delineated commencement and closing stages (typically time-limited, and frequently restricted by finances or deliverables), carried out to satisfy unique goals and intentions characteristically to yield valuable modification or added value.

The modern character of projects rests contrary to routine businesses (or functions), which are recurring, lasting, or short-term operational activities to give rise to goods and services. In fact, the management of such different systems is habitually entirely dissimilar, which necessitates the advancement of divergent technological skills and management approaches.

The major limitation of project management is to acquire the entire project’s aims and intentions while revering the predetermined boundaries. The primary barriers are scale, time, excellence, and financial plan. Another minor, and more determined, limitation is to maximise the distribution of essential inputs and incorporate them to arrive at predetermined goals.

There exist different advances in managing project operations with the inclusion of slant, reiterative incremental, and staged advances. Irrespective of the technique used, careful deliberation has to be accorded to the entire project goals, timeline, and outlay, in addition to the functions and accountabilities of every contributor and policymaker.

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) denotes the unified management of practices, techniques, and expertise employed by project managers as well as Project Management Officials (PMOs) to assess and collectively handle a group of existing or intended projects anchored in several chief attributes.

The goals of Project Portfolio Managers in ADPC are to decide the utmost resource combination for delivery and to plan undertakings to attain the functional and financial objectives of a company excellently while considering limitations posed by consumers, strategic goals, or exterior real-world aspects.

Project Portfolio Management is applicable for companies with numerous ventures and resources that necessitate a formalised structure for following, assigning, and managing them efficiently. When applied, these capacities can be used to suit two different audience sub-sections that are listed below.

• Implementation-focused Project Portfolio Management users: these manage the strategic particulars of project implementation, with the coverage devices to communicate advancement and outlays back to sponsors of the operations and to the senior management.
• Project portfolio-stage users: they make project-associated determining structures, choosing particular projects anchored in those structures, setting the success of those projects or ventures, pursuing those ventures at a high rank, and accounting on those activities.

Process in the project management

Abu Dhabi Ports Company manages the entire profit-making, logistics, society, and leisure ports in Abu Dhabi as well as functions like tourism, land reclamation, building roads, and sewage treatment plants, generation of electric power, building marine units and leisure activities. Abu Dhabi Ports Company has the accountability of productive tasks across commercial harbours in Abu Dhabi.

Having the most significant proportion of trade taking place by the sea, these outstanding harbours act as significant contributors in the economic achievement of Abu Dhabi to advance variegation, in favour of Economic Vision 2030.

With its roles of developing and managing these harbours, Abu Dhabi Ports Company constantly plays major roles in recognition, evaluation and execution of expertise, equipment, networks and strategies that will make sure that each factor of its harbour’s tasks and services is quick, effective and cost-efficient.

Management approach

The aim of Abu Dhabi Ports Company is to manage the harbour infrastructure, its constructions, and every one of its amenities and customers with the least difficult for utmost advantage in accordance with its shared goals and vision.

There are numerous alternatives and methods, both at the strategic and operational stage, for Abu Dhabi Ports Company to offer the necessary management services for Khalifa Port. The strategic goals of the company encompass the following:

1. Adhere to the legislative and governing strategy.
2. Offer a productive and effective facility management services to satisfy the requirements of clients.
3. Offer synergetic savings across every service procession.
4. Line up service ranks with market.
5. Manage modifications with the least influence on the customer.

ADPC project profile

Khalifa Port

This port contains an initial stage capacity of 2.5 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit containers and more than 10 million tones of general cargo every year and an anticipated aptitude of over 14 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit containers and over 30 million tones of general cargo every year by 2030.

This aspect demonstrates just semi-mechanised container workstation of the area, a number of the biggest automated ship-to-seashore cranes internationally. Also, Khalifa Port boasts of other container management tools that allow the Port to provide clients reduced working costs and quicker rotational instances for consigning and unpacking container ships, encompassing some of the biggest internationally.

The avant-garde software of the harbour and wireless expertise guarantees quick processing and incorporated transportation of containers through the port, which as well boasts of flawless connections to the Abu Dhabi and interior marketplaces through speedy infrastructure and future railway links.

Abu Dhabi Ports Company is ensuring improvements across its collection of harbours. These harbours comprise of Mina Zayed and Musaffah Port that promote local industry, tourism, fishing, and activities for leisure time.

Dredging and reclamation

The Khalifa project finished Dredging and Reclamation contract more than a year ahead of plan. This contract had been issued in late 2007 to the Khalifa Port Marine Consortium (KPMC). The KPMC comprised of Archirodon, Boskalis Westminster as well as Hyundai.

The best part of this task encompassed dredging and reclaiming more than 40 million M³ of material, constructing more than three kilometres of dock wall (22 metres high) and offering more than 300,000 M² of rock or concrete shield revetment.

Moreover, the task involved construction of the Environmental Protection Breakwater having its more than two million M3 of rock and revetment, and offering the almost 2 kilometres long bridge linking the Emirates Aluminum (EMAL) facility their devoted berth. This endeavour created the greatest bridge in the United Arab Emirates.

Utilities and infrastructure

There are different contracts of the Khalifa project that are aimed at providing electric power. For instance, contract 207 is to offer the medium voltage (MV) electric power through 34-Kilovolt electric cable system and three 33/11 Kilovolt primary circulation substations. This will supply electric power to the whole of phase 1 of the project and power is distributed from Taweelah Power Station, neighbouring the megaproject.

The agreement on infrastructure encompasses project management, planning, procurement, building, checking and assigning of the entire civil works related to the construction of the offshore terminal section.

The Offshore Terminal Area contains a 1000 metres partly computerized container workstation as well as a 400 metres normal cargo terminal and a reserved section to cater for future development with the provided utilities encompassing sewerage, electric power, telecommunication and drainage.

Buildings, Equipment and Roads

The range of work by Habtoor Leighton Group consists of the building of the on-shore port equipments and encompasses the building of more than 50 permanent houses, the biggest being the Container Freight Station that is more than 200 metres in length. Additionally, there were infrastructural works that encompassed a range of roads and soft landscaping, to mention a few.

Highlights encompass building of more than 20 houses and allied structures. This included the harbour master building and the Terminal Operations Building, a building that has six stories and that is anticipated to turn out to be the centre of the functions of the Port.

More buildings comprise of 11-Kilovolt substations, dock wall, and a more than 5 kilometres double carriageway connecting the marine harbour to the mainland with allied roads and street lighting.

Special system

Under control, the unique systems include fire alarms, Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA).

In the telecommunication sector, the unique systems include Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS), controlled cabling and Telephony, just to mention a few. Lastly, in the security sector, there exists perimeter invasion detection, closed-circuit television (CCTV), defence screening, gate safekeeping and controlled right of entry.

Kizad (Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi)

The variegation of the financial system in addition to different other sectors form the backbone of a majority of economic milestones including the famed Economic Vision 2030 of Abu Dhabi. Kizad started with Kizad section A that had around 50 km². By 2030, section A and B of Kizad will constitute part of the biggest industrial regions across the globe at approximately 420 square kilometres.

Kizad promotes the economic dream by providing logistics and intense capital- and energy- extensive industrialised companies a business setting that gives birth to several financial benefits. The mainstay shareholder of Kizad, viz.

Emirates Aluminium (EMAL), is intending to upgrade its status to rank among the leading companies across the world and it pioneered in 2009. Fresh logistics and intense industrialised manufacturing shareholders are anticipated to start functions from Kizad in this year.

The strategic position of Kizad connecting east and west, and its first-rate, intermodal groundwork connecting air, roads, sea, and railway offers shareholders effortless and effective contact to over 5 billion customers in four-time regions.

Vertically incorporated groups form the critical aspect of logistical competence. Also, affordable rental charges coupled with duty-free environment and some low service costs across the globe ensure that companies enjoy unique competitive benefits.

Shahama Port

The pronouncement of another project in Abu Dhabi was announced on the sidelines of the continuing international Port and business summit in the capital of the United Arab Emirates. In the pronouncement, done by Waleed (VP of project advance at ADPC), it was clear that ADPC could be working on the project at Shahama Port at the cost of around AED 35 million, situated more than 4 kilometres from the highway to Dubai.

The Shahama Port is aimed at supporting vision 2030 of Abu Dhabi. It would be developed into a trade and tourism centre. Shahama Port will house recreational facilities for both the society and undertakings at the harbour. The initial stage of Shahama Port is in progress and is anticipated to begin operations in 2014.

The initial stage of the project is expected to provide both wet and dry berths, a massive slipway for boats, refuelling stations and shops, just to mention a few. In the meantime, Abu Dhabi Ports Company declared the commencement of an auxiliary company, Abu Dhabi Ports Company Marine services.

The purpose of the auxiliary company was to offer shipping into UAE. The auxiliary company will have over 150 employees, devoted to fields like those of pilots and many others.

ERP Project

The main objective of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is to sustain ADPC’s heart operation processes and to facilitate dependable business management. The everyday business undertakings that strengthen knowledge anchored management judgements and a strong document administration network incorporated in the Enterprise Resource Planning and encompasses the following.

HR

The Human Resource Management (HRM) offers Abu Dhabi Ports Company with personnel endowed with proficiencies required to undertake in the operations of the programmes and projects effectively. Apart from recruitment, the other tasks of the Human Resource (HR) department are to pay salaries to the staff and carry out other staff management roles like issuing leave and certificates.

Procurement

The Procurement Management ensures that procurement endeavours go in line with the certified policy by the company. Other functions of the Procurement Management encompass assessing tender and requesting contracts.

Finance

Abu Dhabi Ports Company mainly deals with developing and managing ports and industrial sectors in Abu Dhabi. The company runs over ten profit-making, supplying, and societal ventures among others encompassing its chief modernised Khalifa Port.

The company is as well upgrading Kizad that is situated alongside Khalifa Port. Kizad operates different logistics and industrialised shareholders and seeks to build up to become the chief industrial sector internationally. By 2030, Kizad and Khalifa Port are anticipated to raise more than 14 per cent of the non-oil Gross Domestic Product of Abu Dhabi.

The initial-stage advancement of this project reveals an outlay of 7.2 billion dollars and it has been portrayed as the most significant project n the financial system of Abu Dhabi. The operations of the finance department include preparing budgets, invoices and salaries in addition to asset management.

Asset Management & Material Management

The need for outstanding asset and material management is increasing instead of reducing. Obligations are turning out to be more complicated and the number of policymakers, and thereby the intricacy of gathering and distribution of information is augmenting.

This tendency is set to persist on condition that the strict regulation of utilities will be raised, private support schemes to finance the main capital programs will increase, and that there will be higher collective comprehension of asset management hazard. The forces and conditions on developers and possessions management organisations are ever-increasing.

There exists more strict performance and accounting measures, and their preparation, budgeting and monetary accountabilities are in consistent inspection. Computerised asset management networks have been established for the aim of realising the asset management objectives. A Total Asset Management system authorises agencies to:-

• Prepare and account for assets.
• Supervise and maximise asset upkeep.
• Gauge performance alongside established goals.
• Meet the compulsions of the Service Level Agreements.
• Establish performance estimates for assets.

The most significant item of the system is an asset register that records every monetary, building and performance obligation information for every asset.

Others

Asset management policy

This policy allows organisations to develop the asset portfolio that most reasonably and competently satisfies their service delivery obligations. An asset policy is the medium through which an agency matches its asset assortment to its service provision demands.

It describes the fundamental associations involving the service delivery policy and capital venture, asset upkeep, asset dumping and office housing strategic designs in conjunction with the way these designs interconnect.

Regardless of what the operation of the construction is, if the assets in a facility fail to satisfy the anticipated service demands and facility value, the significance of the development is influenced as the value of the assets decreases. To back the facility at a degree in which its worth does not decrease before anticipations, there is a need for a suitable standard to be set up.

The excellence of the facility is directly associated with the controlled Service Level Agreements and these have to be developed according to both the desires of the facility possessor and the novel design condition.

To attain an excellent performance and outstanding degree of the Service Level Agreements, there is a need for a comprehension of the different disciplines in the Facility Management functions like maintenance, cleaning and landscaping just to mention a few.

Service Level Agreements thus turn out to be critical for every asset management policy. Every asset and its performance with time influence the facility performance and venture in such progress. In a bid to sustain and boost the performance and the intensity of venture, there is a need for the capacity to classify, examine, and gauge the service.

Project Management Committee

Board committee

Some of the functions of the Board committee include the following.

1. Reacting fast.
2. Assessing and approving policies, plans and other major systems.
3. Monitoring operations and performance within the company.
4. Guaranteeing active collaboration and communication amid the departments.

CCB, Change control committee

The Change control Committee was put in place in a bid to assess change demands concerning building and business activities; to endorse cost and to assign budgets. This guarantees that a structured procedure is employed to manage the recommended changes.

Operation Readiness committee

The Operation Readiness Committee makes sure that every business component (such as immigration and defence) is in position and operating efficiently.

Commercial Committee

The functions of the commercial committee are primarily to assess and approve requests presented by the different departments. The major aim of the committee is to sustain integrity, intelligibility, and competitiveness in the commercial processes within the company.

Challenges of Khalifa Port Project

Coral Reef

Khalifa Port acquired rewards for safeguarding a national wealth (coral reef) positioned beside Khalifa Port. The coral reef has a size of 35 KM ² and is the largest coral reef in the United Arab Emirates acting as habitat for thriving marine animals like turtles. The challenge facing Khalifa port is protecting the coral reef and ensuring it benefits from it.

Environmental breakwater

Khalifa Port has faced the challenge of constructing environmental water that successful guard the delicate reef. In this endeavour, Khalifa Port has constructed a breakwater that is 8 kilometres in length and that twists around the Port Island like a mum’s hand to protect coral reef at a cost of AED 900 million.

Risk in the project

Incorporation risk

The functions of Abu Dhabi Ports Company had no structure that would operate as a doorway to every significant business dealings. This aspect as well signified the absence of flawless incorporation linking the Enterprise resource planning policy and different third party structures.

Abu Dhabi Ports Company as well intended to make sure that the accessible statistics with every one of the operation could be simply contemporised across the company and it could be simple to access it for every confirmed customer, with the inclusion of sales and calls departments. Additionally, the company intended to eradicate legacy structure, with effective relocation of statistics to the new coordination.

Scrutinising

The judgment makers at Abu Dhabi Ports Company stressed on the requirement for perfect progression visibility, through their perspective, which could entail having the arranged statistics, in the nature of control panels and reports produced in accordance with their needs.

The management as well requires securitising real operation period taken by workers and compares the date with the payment budget in a bid to eradicate discrepancies in information associated with ventures and contracts. Moreover, the management faced difficulties in trying to apply excellent domination, risk, and conformity performances to make the company attain international standards.

Process differences

The management of ADPC intended to start a spryer company that would have integrated business practices, to create a chance for more effectiveness and achieve better value for money, which led to the substitution of slow manual authorisation practices with programmed and system anchored authorisation practices, in a bid to lessen the process setbacks.

The successful key elements

Project management

On the main objective of boosting the practice visibility and developing management over the projects, Fujitsu assisted in the execution of project deals. The human resource management unit in Abu Dhabi Ports Company incorporated Hyperion, Finance, and other modules to guarantee better firm incorporation throughout the value chain.

Certification

Fujitsu executed document quantification and accounting system in accordance with the needs of the company and enhanced it with project contracts to offer a resolution for the formation and management of every kind of contractual certificates in the venture.

Official support

Effecting of official systems allowed labour force to deal with clients effectively. Different attributes were incorporated in the system for enhancing effectiveness and allowing the personnel to scrutinise port actions such as quantity of ships getting in and out of the facility, in addition to covering the position of building projects at the company.

Information accessibility

The Internet solution has resulted in simpler accessibility of suitable information, especially for management consumption, while simultaneously safeguarding it from the availability and privacy points of view. Incorporated, mutual systems have guaranteed total visibility of designated functions, concerns, and deliverables from the group associates, which have allowed the group to operate more cohesively and effectively.

Recommendation

1. With respect to the policy for Khalifa Port, there existed some aspects to take into account as outlined below.
   1. Khalifa Port is a fresh advancement and will thereby necessitate management of Defect and Liability Period and warranties in the course of the early phases of the existence of the harbour.
   2. Technological services are sections in a big association that have other conventional Facility Management services in other departments in functions of the harbour that could be extended to handle different harbours under Abu Dhabi Ports Company.
   3. KIZAD will operate under the management of other technological services sections.
2. With respect to the five management structure alternatives, Olive-Value Facilities Management suggests that operational supervision in outsourced packaged service contracts should be outsourced to the service provider with services subcontracted gradually or brought on bulk relying on company strategies, the marketplace, the degree of local proficiencies and technological capacity and outlined mission-vital services.
3. In the outsourced packaged service contracts, Abu Dhabi Ports Company manages the data in addition to strategic and operational management goals for the service providers to execute and manage. Olive-Value Facility Management deems this element as a minimal risk advance and potentially the main cost-efficient technique of service delivery relying on the fee arrangement; it increases the application of confirmed partners and permits the competitive tender practice to be applied devoid of acquiring revenue on revenue situations. Having this management policy, the operational and management policies for Khalifa Port should aim at determining the services and structures and the manner in which the operational contract could be established in position.

Conclusion

The science of planning, arranging, prompting and administering resources to arrive at particular objectives is what denotes project management. Abu Dhabi Ports Company generally deals with developing and managing ports and manufacturing regions in Abu Dhabi. Kizad operates diverse logistics and industrialised shareholders and seeks to rise and become the chief industrial sector internationally.

By 2030, Kizad and Khalifa Port are anticipated to have more than 14% of the non-oil GDP of Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi Ports Company manages the entire viable, logistics, society, and leisure harbours in Abu Dhabi as well as tasks like tourism, land renewal, building roads, and sewage treatment work, production of electric power, building marine entities and leisure activities.

Having a paramount percentage of trade taking place by sea, these exceptional harbours act as major suppliers in the economic achievement of Abu Dhabi to advance variegation, supportive of Economic Vision 2030.

Khalifa Port contains a preliminary stage aptitude of 2.5 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit containers and over 10 million tones of general cargo each year and an anticipated capacity of over 14 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit containers and over 30 million tones of general cargo every year by 2030.

The strategic position of Kizad joining east to west, and its unsurpassed, intermodal groundwork connecting air, roads, sea, and railway proffers shareholders unproblematic and effective contact to over 5 billion customers over an extensive section.

The formation of Technical Services Department for the staged and completely functional Port will be an important concern because of the character of the advancement, it is working structure, the number of policymakers, services entailed, and human capital required.

The application proficiencies of Fujitsu, infrastructure, conferring and software is constantly assisting Abu Dhabi Ports Company to rise above its challenges and incorporate other corporations such as Abu Dhabi Terminals (ADT).

This aspect helps in the construction, operation, and management of its different projects with respect to Kizad and all the company’s Ports in a bid to successful march towards the attainment of vision 2030 of the United Arab Emirates.