Newsletter issue # 4

December 31, 2016 What’s Inside

News

Activities

Communications

Training Schedule

Board Members

WISH YOU A HAPPY & PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2017

On behalf of the AACE-AGS Board and I wish you a happy New Year, May every good present

day, becomes a treasure for a better tomorrow, Happy New Year!

If you have not yet remitted payment for your 2017 membership dues,

please do so immediately to ensure that you continue to receive all of the

benefits of membership with AACE, including free access to the TCM

Framework and Recommended Practices. Please email us

at membership@aacei.org if you run into any issues. please contact Sha-

ron Hardman at shardman@aacei.org or (304) 296-8444, ext. 1105.

Ahmed K. Al-Mulhim

AACEI-AGS President

TECHNICAL DINNER MEETING

“Project Office Management – PMO”

AACE-AGS & Saudi Council of Engineers Project Management Chapter jointly conducted

the 4th Technical Dinner Meeting on Dec 1st, 2016, in Burj Rafal Kempinski Hotel, Riyadh

The Saudi Council of Engineers-Project Manage-ment Chapter and AACE-Arabian Gulf Section jointly conducted the 4th Technical Dinner Meeting on Thursday 01 December 2016 in Burj Rafal Kempinski Hotel , Riyadh.

Dr. Hasnain Rizvi ,OPM3 Consultant, Doctorate of Business Administration, Financial Management, California southern University was the speaker of this event and delivered a technical presentation on "Project Office Management – PMO".

Dr. Hasnain Rizvi and Mr. Ahmed Mulhim

AACE- AGS VISIT TO

KIN ABDULAZIZ UNIVERSITY

The Saudi Council of Engineers-Project Manage-ment Chapter and AACE-Arabian Gulf Section joint-ly conducted the 5th Technical Dinner Meeting on Monday 05 December 2016 in Al Khozama confer-ence center, Riyadh.

Mr. David Clifton, Middle East Regional Develop-ment Director—Faithful & Gould, with over 18 years in the projects from project, program & cli-ents representative and planning management functions in the aviation, infrastructure, mixed use, healthcare, oil & gas lifestyle sectors in (USA, UK & Middle East), was the speaker of this event and delivered a technical presentation on "An insight into PMOs and KSA Market Overview".

TECHNICAL DINNER MEETING

“An insight into PMOs and KSA Market Overview”

AACE-AGS & Saudi Council of Engineers Project Management Chapter jointly conducted

the 5th Technical Dinner Meeting on Dec 5 2016, in Al Khozama conference center, Riyadh

AACE-AGS PARTICIPATION WITH OTHER PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

AACE-AGS participated in the Annual General Meeting of the Philippine Institute of Civil En-gineers (PICE), held on Friday, 02 December 2016 in Dhahran International Hotel, 5:30 AM to 5:30 PM.

Mr. Ahmed K. Mulhem, AACE-

AGS President delivered a tech-

nical presentation on "AACE In-

ternational and Arabian Gulf Sec-

tion, Certifications and its activi-

ties etc. During the presentation

AGS offered a special discounted

fee for the AACE Certification Re-

fresher Seminars / Exam Prepara-

tory workshops for the PICE

Members. Further it was also in-

formed them the AGS is ready to

provide an in-house training pro-

gram for the PICE Members.

AACE - AGS President visit to (KFUPM)

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran

An awareness presentation about AACEi has been conducted in King Fahad

University of Petroleum and Minerals on De-

cember 20, 2016. The presentation delivered

by AACEi-Arabian Gulf section President Mr.

Ahmed Al-Mulhim covered the membership

benefits and the certifications offered by

AACEi. The attendees (over 30) from the Construction Engineer-

ing & Management Master Degree Students in addition to Dr.

Soliman Al-Mohawis appreciated the initiative from AACEi and

were very interested about the membership and certifications.

Associate Professor of

Construction Engineer-

ing & Management De-

partment at King Fahd

University of Petroleum

and Minerals (KFUPM)

Dhahran

Dr. Soliman Al Mohawis

AACE-AGS 6th Board

meeting was held on

Dec 21, 2016

Wednesday in the

conference hall of

M/s Tarkiz Consult-

ants, Al-Khobar.

AACEI - AGS

COMMUNICATIONS

A memorandum of Understanding has been signed be-tween Saudi Council of Engineers (SCE) and AACEi-Arabian Gulf Section (AACEI-AGS) in Riyadh-Saudi Arabia on January 11, 2017. The MoU signed by SCE secretary General Dr. Hussain Al-Fadhli and Ahmed Al-Mulhim (President-AACEI-AGS) will pave the road for technical collaboration between both entities for training, technical seminars, conferences, membership database and utiliza-tion of SCE existing facilities for different purposes.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS OF TECHNICAL SEMINARS

The Saudi Council of Engineers -

Project Management Chapter is

pleased to invite you to submit

your abstract for its 2017 Tech-

nical Seminars, which are

planned to conduct in various

cities of the Kingdom of Saudi

Arabia. The presentations are to

be conducted at night and the

presentation duration should be

45-60 minutes length and it shall be focused on Projects Management related topics.

Please submit at Link: https://goo.gl/forms/6RHA60xNX7MgG4tD3

CALENDAR OF EXAM PREPARATORY WORKSHOPS

REGISTER

NOW!

AACEI - ARABIAN GULF SECTION HIGHLIGHTS

TOWARDS BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT

SIX SIGMA (6 Σ) AN EXAMPLE

What is six sigma?

Sigma (σ) is a Greek alphabet letter designated as a statistical symbol for variation. The pur-

pose of Six Sigma is to reduce the process variation to meet the customer requirements. This

is stated as to have 3.4 defects per million of opportunities (DPMO).

Six Sigma can be defined in several ways. Tomkins (1997) defined six sigma to be " a program

aimed at the near-elimination of defects from every product, process and transaction" while

Harry (1998) defined it as " a strategic initiative to boost profitability, increase market share

and improve customer satisfaction through statistical tools that can lead to breakthrough

quantum gains in quality." Craig Gegy in his book " Six Sigma for Dummies" defines six sigma

to be " Six Sigma is a problem solving methodology. In fact it is the best problem solving

methodology available for improving business and organization performance.

Tomkins definition is very concise and concentrating on quality only while six sigma can re-

duce time cycle and reduce cost as well. However Harry's definition is concentrating on the

purpose of six sigma and not considering its function clearly. Again his definition was linked

only to quality. The third definition which was set by Craig Gegy was too general and did not

differentiate it between other quality programs. We can define six sigma to be " a disciplined

process that uses statistical tool to improve quality, reduce cycle time and cost of product,

process and transaction." Six sigma is not a quality management like ISO 9001 and it is not a

traditional quality program that apply the quality on the product but it is concerned with

process that produce nearly free defect product.

Six Sigma vs. Total Quality Management (TQM)

To differentiate between Six Sigma and other quality programs, we shall make compare it

with one of the most applied quality program; that is Total Quality Management (TQM).

Six Sigma is a relatively new concept compared to Total Quality Management. Tony Jackous-

ki; the writer of the article " Six Sigma vs. Total Quality Management" claimed that six sigma

was not intended to replace TQM. There are many similarities and compatibility between

both programs. Let's go for a comparison and see whether they can both be used or one of

them will prevail on the other.

TQM is concerned with the development, deployment and maintenance of the company

systems which are needed for business process. It is based on a strategic approach that con-

centrates on maintaining the current quality standards and adding incremental improve-

ment to the system. TQM is considered as a cultural initiative that creates cooperation be-

tween all functional departments within the organization to obtain overall quality.

While TQM has helped many companies to improve their products and services quality, Six

Sigma has the potential to get sharper results because of relying on statistical tools and sci-

entific methods. Six Sigma is not just a program of improving the process but it is a continu-

ous one that keeps improving the process by nearly reducing effect by 3.4 defects per mil-

lion of opportunities (DPMO). It uses a statistical process control (SPC) for controlling and

monitoring the process. Once it gains a result, it shifts to the second level and so on. Howev-

er TQM reach a stage which there is no further a stage of improvement.

TQM method focuses on the conformance to the internal requirement to improve the quali-

ty while Six Sigma is concerned on reducing the number of defect, time cycle and cost. It is

not a cost cutting but eliminating the steps which have no added value to the product and

considered as waste.

TQM deals with individual operation within unrelated business process while Six Sigma im-

proves all operations related to a single business process. Six sigma requires the participa-

tion of a full time professional Black Belt (BB) certified professional to lead the improvement

process while TQM can assign a part time none dedicated manager.

Six Sigma is a project initiative that requires a charter including preplanned schedule, re-

sources and financial benefits. Companies using TQM usually are not aware of the financial

benefits and cost of the improvement process. Six Sigma is based on DMAIC process to de-

fine the problem clearly, measure the effects and recommend the solutions which can be

measured.

In conclusion, Six Sigma is a fact based and data driven that provides a quantifiable and

measured solution and a result oriented method and linked to organization strategy and cus-

tomer expectations. I think that TQM is on its way to expiry and Six Sigma will prevail and

outlast TQM.

History of Six sigma

According to Sung H. Park in his book " SIX Sigma for Quality and Production Promotion' Six

Sigma has been launched by Motorola in 1987. In the late of 1970s, Motorola has been in

danger because of the strength of Japanese quality. Paul Galvin; the owner of Motorola re-

ceived a notice of customers dissatisfaction. He decided to make the satisfaction of customer

the number one objective of his company. He sat goals on performance improving for the

next five years. Furthermore, he solicited a quality experts like Joseph Juran and Dorian Shain-

in. Both helped in identifying quality problem and solving them with statistical improvement

methodologies. From 1981 to 1986, Motorola has invested $220,000 to train 3500 people.

The financial benefits were around $6.4 million of cost savings and a real performance im-

provement and customers satisfactions were noticed. However, the danger of Japanese quali-

ty is still there. As a result, Motorola's communication center presented their ideas to Mr. Gal-

vin as " Six Sigma Mechanical Design Tolerancing". Motorola in that time, estimated that they

were performing around 4 sigma, i.e. 6,800 DPMO. The next five years, the communication

sector realized that the gap between them and the Japanese were diminished. After their suc-

cess, Motorola launched their strategic initiative which

was called " Six Sigma Quality". Saving estimate for 1988 was $480 million from$ 9.2 Billion of

sales. The following year, Motorola received a prestigious Malcolm Baldrige. After one year,

they have been awarded the Nikkei Award for manufacturing from Japan.

One question comes to our minds that who were the inventor of Six Sigma? Alan Ramias in his

article " The Mists of Six Sigma" discusses the idea that six sigma was invented by one person

and according to Peter Pande, Craig Gygi that many people contributed to the invention of Six

Sigma.

“Motorola is where Six Sigma began. A highly skilled, confident, and trained engineer who

knew statistics, Mikel Harry, began to study the variations in the various processes within

Motorola.” – Six Sigma for Everyone, by George Eckes.

“Alan Larson, one of the early internal Six Sigma consultants who later helped spread the

concept to GE and AlliedSignal.” – The Six Sigma Way by Peter Pande, et al.

Though, Six Sigma was introduced by Motorola, GE is the company which proven the effec-tiveness of Six Sigma. GE began Six Sigma program in 1995 and has achieved remarkable re-sults since that time. An annual report of GE operating income states that that Six Sigma add-ed $ 300 million to the income and in 1998; this number has been increased to $ 750 million.

Six Sigma Limitations

According to Dr. Jiju Antony in his article "Some Pros and Cons of Six Sigma", we can summa-

rize Six Sigma limitation as follows:-

Six Sigma requires a quality data to start the improvement project. In some cases, it is

very difficult to find the required information. This part can really take the major part of

the project.

The right selection and prioritization of project is very critical to the success of Six Sigma

program. In the author opinion, there are very few tools and most of tools are purely sub-

jective. This could be a good subject for further research.

Six Sigma target is to reach 3.4 DPMO while defects in service could be anything which can

dissatisfy the customers. This assumes that all defects are equally bad. For Example; in

hospitals, a patient misbehaving is not as important as diagnosis mistakes and still both of

them are considered to be defects.

No standardized procedure in certification as research showed that skills and expertise de-

veloped by Black Belts/Green Belts are inconsistence across different companies.

The relation between Cost of Poor Quality (COPC) and the process Six Sigma Level needs

further justifications.

Six Sigma can easily fall in bureaucratic exercises if they concentrated on how many black

belts were certified? Or number of accomplished projects rather than the baseline savings.

Six Sigma in Services Business A research done by Yilmaz and Chaterjee (2000) has shown that services industry like billing,

invoicing, payroll, shipping and service order were performing less than 3.5 sigma which is

23000 DPMO or 97.7%. If we want to improve the process to 4 sigma, i.e. 6210 DPMO or

99.38%, that will indicate 3.5 fold in development of process performance. The real economy

in developed countries is no longer manufacturing based economy as manufacturing was

shifted to low cost countries like china, India, Thailand, etc. Therefore, the service businesses,

like health services, logistics, financial services and commercial one are occupying the vast

majority of business in these countries. Six Sigma can be used for service businesses to re-

duce the cost of poor quality so that a better process can be achieved. Another reason to use

Six Sigma is to minimize the process variation. For instance, the customers nowadays are ra-

tional. They consider the delivery variation rather than the average mean of the delivery time.

Therefore, there is a big chance for Six Sigma to improve the process.

Myth about Six Sigma Six Sigma is still not yet prevailing in service business like in UK because of the wrong believes

that Six Sigma is only associated with manufacturing solutions. They believe that since service

business is driven by human beings, so there is no part for Six Sigma in the business. Further-

more, it is thought that Six Sigma needs complicated and special statistical and improvement

tools for service business. In fact, Service business does not need many tools of Six Sigma

toolbox. They need some simple tools in problem solving like Process Mapping, Cause and

Effect Analysis, Pareto Analysis and Control Chart and so on.

Another myth is that Six Sigma requires massive training cost and additional efforts that cause

misconception among employees. It is true that Six Sigma requires some investment for the

talented people who can act as "change agent. It was proven that the financial benefits ac-

quired from Six Sigma will outweigh the investment cost.

In conclusion

We can claim that Six Sigma made and will continue make remarkable changes to business by

adding a high value that will add competitive ad-

vantages to those organizations adapting Six Sig-

ma. Let's wrap up by what GE CEO; Jack Welch

described Six Sigma as follows: "Six Sigma will

be an exciting journey and the most difficult and

invigorating stretch goal we have ever undertak-

en… This Six Sigma will change the paradigm

from fixing products so that they are perfect to

fixing processes so that they produce nothing

but perfection, or close to it."

A professional Construction Project Manager

holding a BS. in Mechanical Engineering from King

Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals

(KFUPM), MBA Degree from Al Ahlia University

and PMP Credential backed by 17 years’ experi-

ence predominantly in construction and engi-

neering projects with exposure to industrial sales

and design/conduct of HR development & profes-

sional training courses and currently working with

Jacobs Zate (JZ), as a Manager of Construction.

Ali Al Marar

Jacobs Construction Project Manager

PMP, AVS , MBA

M: +966561567450 | ali.almarar@gmail.com

HOW GOOD PROJECT MANAGEMENT

CONTRIBUTES TO WORKPLACE SAFETY

Every workplace owes its employees a duty to ensure their

safety at work. When a workplace is a high-risk one, such as a

construction site or a plant, it is particularly important to be

meticulous about safety given the potential for the occurrence

of disastrous accidents. When an environment is inherently

risky and may give rise to dangerous situations, careful project

management is necessary in order to ensure employees’ safe-

ty. While safety measures can certainly help to reduce the risk

of workplace injuries, without sound project management

such measures may be rendered ineffective.

Following are a few reasons project management is a key

ingredient in ensuring workplace safety.

Centralized Point of Contact

Many serious accidents don’t just happen out of the blue. In-

stead, they are often preceded by seemingly benign situations

that nonetheless reveal potential dangers. For example, em-

ployees neglecting to wear proper safety equipment can usual-

ly be identified as a risk even before an accident occurs. Many

dangerous situations also develop over long periods of time

and can be spotted before an accident occurs. For instance,

any wear and tear or damage to equipment or scaffolding is

usually noticed before it leads to accidents. Good project man-

agement will provide anyone who notices potentially danger-

ous situations with a centralized point of contact to report

such dangers.

Central Point for Scheduling

As employee numbers increase, it becomes difficult to be ap-

prised of what each individual team is doing, and this may

cause overlaps in tasks that can prove dangerous. Sound pro-

ject management is needed for effective scheduling, which

can ensure, for instance, that the maximum number of people

who can be accommodated safely in a particular area is never

exceeded.

Keeps Employees Informed

It is not enough for management to know who is doing what

and where. All employees need to be similarly apprised of

what is going on so they do not make mistakes that might give

rise to dangerous situations. This is best done with a daily

morning briefing that will keep all employees up to date be-

fore they begin work.

First Point of Contact for Outsiders

Many dangerous situations arise because an outsider, such as

a worker from another company or a deliveryman, enters the

premises without being aware of safety rules and danger

zones. Good project management provides all outsiders with

a first point of contact to ensure they do not end up wander-

ing around the premises unaccompanied.

By offering centralized organization, project management con-

tributes invaluably to workplace safety. This is especially cru-

cial when there are large numbers of employees or teams

performing different tasks. When employees and teams are

not aware of what others are doing, they unwittingly cause

dangerous situations to arise. With clear and concise schedul-

ing and employees who have a keen awareness of what is go-

ing on at the premises, risks at the workplace can be reduced

considerably.

In-house Training Programs

AGS also provides in-house training programs for companies / organizations on their

premises during the 5-day work week.

The AACE International certification program has been designed to provide the industry with

Certified Professionals to perform as cost engineers, estimators, planners & schedulers.

Additionally, the workshops enhance abilities of Cost Engineering Professionals by gaining special

recognition of their peers and highlighting those who meet prescribed standards of performance and

conduct and have demonstrated their excellence by maintaining a high level of competence.

For registration https://goo.gl/forms/u8tBFmadsaEOKmU32

OR contact at reg@aace-ags.org / reg.aacei.ags@gmail.com

For more updates please log on our website: www.aace-ags.org / www.aacei.org

CALENDAR OF CERTIFICATION

AACEI-AGS is pleased to announce the schedule for the upcoming Certification Refresher

Seminars and Exam preparatory Workshops which are to be conducted on every Fridays,

02:00 PM to 7:00 PM in Saudi Arabia

Certification Seminars for June 2016 to May 2017

MONTH VENUE CERTIFICATION NAME

Oct-Nov 2016 Al-Khobar, Riyadh CCP - Cost Certified Professional Exam Preparatory Workshops

Oct-Nov 2016 Al-Khobar, Riyadh CEP - Cost Estimation Professional Exam Prep Workshops

Nov-Dec 2016 Al-Khobar, Riyadh PSP - Planning & Scheduling Professional Exam Prep Workshops

Dec-Jan 2017 Al-Khobar, Riyadh EVP – Earned Value Professional Exam Prep Workshops

Feb-Apr 2017 Al-Khobar, Riyadh CCP - Cost Certified Professional Exam Preparatory Workshops

Mar-Apr 2017 Al-Khobar, Riyadh PSP - Planning & Scheduling Professional Exam Prep Workshops

Apr-May 2017 Al-Khobar, Riyadh CEP - Cost Estimation Professional Exam Prep Workshops

Apr-May 2017 Al-Khobar, Riyadh EVP – Earned Value Professional Exam Prep Workshops