When it grows up, Arabtec wants to be a dinosaur like Grupo ASC

Two out of three of my favourite construction ‘giants’ made it to the global business-news yesterday.

And no, neither because I waged a successful attack against them, though I’ve been known to attempt such questionable acts in the past.

Balfour Beatty has been attracting worldwide attention, due its less than acceptable (I guess to the shareholders) financial performance, that had its CEO unglamorously dumped as well.

(note to myself, stop writing to Andrew McNaughton regarding my own grievances, wait for a new chap to replace him).

Arabtec, on the other hand, the builder of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, yesterday reported a net profit of Dh138 million for the first quarter of 2014, a 121 per cent jump from a year ago.

Nice, I thought, listening to the reporter of Abu Dhabi’s Classic FM discuss Arabtec’s success and ponder its plans for the future.

Aside from pronouncing Hochtief in a really weird way, the business commentator-woman explained, how Arabtec planned to become one of 10 largest construction companies in the World.

By when? Well, I can’t recall this, but soon enough.

She did mention numerous Chinese companies that were at the top of the pinnacle Arabtec was now targeting, I missed their names too, Gammon was definitely not amongst them, I’d notice that.

The one company she mentioned as the possibly biggest non-Chinese construction company of the world was the Spanish construction company Grupo ACS, one by chance I know quite well.

I’ve had personal and less personal dealings with this company (and its subsidiaries) over the last 4 years and I’d be quite sad if theirs was the type of success that Arabtec was wanting to emulate.

Sure, they gobbled up smaller/weaker companies over time. Sure, they play the game confidently and cool and they look like winners even when they make nothing but losses.

They may have more charm than others in the industry, but are they any more innovative, truly smart or ‘new age’ than the others?

No, not really.

I do applaud Arabtec for their financial success but would also suggest they look sideways too as they plan to grow even bigger.

Admittedly not in the near future (the ASC type dinosaurs do rule the industry for now and may hang on for quite a bit longer) but at some point in the next decade or two, the industry will change.

Being smart and innovative will count for more then.

Picture from here:

http://barney.wikia.com/wiki/Let%27s_Build_Together

I’d expect more kinetic action from any company associated with the shrewd Mr Habtoor…. Labouring over the idle cranes across the road

We rented a second car for this week. Not a big issue, we have a good relationship with a local supplier, goes back over 3 years now.

Diamondlease (a Habtoor Group company) has been a trusted partner of ours for most of our life in the UAE.

Yes, the Lancer we often get for the second vehicle is a ‘dog of a car’ but the Mitsubishi Mirage I’ve had for months is a snazzy little set-of-wheels.

The staff are helpful, courteous and know us by our names. Happy.

Much less happy I’m about the centre-piece of the view from my balcony, a farce of motionless cranes strangely stationary within the bustle of the rejuvenated Dubai city. (see pictures);

Yes, I’ve written previously about the Habtoor Leighton Group’s stagecraft known as the Dubai Pearl, an ambitious iconic project that is enjoying a Sleeping Beauty type of a slumber party at the moment, half-or less completed, possibly waiting for a new ‘prince of an investor’.

A sad little gathering of construction machinery guards the naked structure, frozen in time, also waiting for a more fulfilling working future.

There were many readers that found my musings over this trivial issue below their threshold of tolerance for my liking to dither over the insignificant facets of this mega-industry, I work in.

Some voiced their concerns, others just switched off.

Fully respecting their right to do any of those two actions described above, as well as hanging around for another lot of mulling over the inconsequential, I am sad to need to report that the cranes are still as they were a week ago, or 2 or 5 or maybe even 50;

Can’t go back in time to a fix point of a year or more ago, as the view from our home was significantly different than then is now.

Granted, that even at that time I had a slightly obsessive interest in the activities of the company that is in charge of this site too (Habtoor Leighton Group).

I was a bit more interested in the idle workforce then, inactive cranes were less of my worry.

Maybe it is a good sign that I can now afford to be mulling over this matter, day in and day out, slowly watching as time passes over the make-believe story of a successful HLG.

There could be much less enjoyable pastimes than enjoying the sun set over the horizon in this pretty city, so I should stop complaining.

And I would, if it was not for the head-splitting conundrum that the theory poses for me, that of the highly successful, palace building Mr Habtoor is giving his blessing to this continuous charade.

There could be, of course, at least two other explanations for the Habtoors en masse to give their blessing for this negligent (mis)use of construction plant, either the client is paying market rates for them doing nothing or they are not real cranes at all, just very hardy, cardboard-made props that have lasted the last year-or-so of this playhouse of false advertising.

If either of these is the case, Mr Habtoor outplayed me there with his cunning business skills, yet again.

 

Today’s sunset and Two full pictures of the site in question taken a month apart in March and April 2014

Some examples of misguided uses of shareholders’ funds for dubious promotional purposes by Balfour Beatty’s Gammon and Leighton’s HLG

I sit on my balcony, wondering:

Do construction cranes have feelings? Do they get lonely, depressed?

Sad for being underappreciated and under-utilised, reduced to the dumb role of a piece of a stagecraft?

Frozen in a set position for months, decorated by signs, lit up at night, guarding over an unfinished building, enviously eyeing their brothers on the other side of Sheik Zayed’s road, busily pulling up yet another tower, in front of their weary eyes.

There are probably at least a dozen cranes on the abandoned – or diplomatically labelled – temporarily suspended, Dubai Pearl construction site.

They’ve been sitting there, idle for months now, if not a full year, some clever chap having decided it to be a good move to keep them there, nicely spaced out; such a prime location cannot be ignored for marketing purposes.

Or maybe they just have no new jobs to go to, even temporarily while the troubled project gets its funding sorted and restarts?

Some 6000km to the East their not-so distant relatives have been having a slightly more exciting life.

In February Gammon, Leighton’s JV partner on a number of high profile projects in Hong Kong held their annual Spring Dinner.

Probably not considered a luxury by the company, just a run of the mill entertainment for the loyal employees and some VIPs.

Sure, the ‘airline-industry’ themed party did not lack on flamboyance, trust the marketing department to go all nine yards to make every detail, just right. From the entry ‘fake screening gates’ via the make-believe boarding card tickets to the buttons on all of the VIPs uniforms, things were shiny, in style and grand.

Still, what would have interested the mishandled cranes from the Dubai story more than any other bling, would have been the role a concrete truck had to play at the party.

Not only was it lovingly cleaned (if not entirely new), polished and decorated with a lovely pink horse for the occasion but also parked in the middle of one of the halls in the Asia World Expo.

Candy saw to it that the well appreciated vehicle had the best view of the event.

I should probably feel honoured if any/many of my loyal readers got all the way through here, without giving up on this post and/or labelling me as someone that has ‘finally lost it’.

That maybe so, I’d caution anyone against jumping into conclusions too hastily.

Not my perceived fragile state of mind, nor even my well documented feelings of distrust against these companies should distract from the fact, that the management of these entities have still not found their way of steering the companies into long term stability, if anything, they are the ones ‘losing it’.

One may rightly wonder how could I be reaching such a harsh conclusion based on two, relatively benign incidents of careless use of petty cash, that I have remotely observed?

I can and I do.

Because, these are only the tips of the icebergs of ‘management by arrogance’ practices employed by these two construction ‘giants’ – and on these icebergs  I’ll keep on reporting.

For my own sanity, the future of the AEC and for those poor cranes across the road.

First picture from here

http://cofico.com.vn/en/company-news/522-hoat-dong-kdnm-2014-trangchu.html

Second, my own.

Battleships and mind-wars and what could the future hold for the dumped CEO of Leightons?

Just about any media outlet that reported on what happened to the ‘Australian Construction Giant’ Leighton over the last week or so, labelled the events as the actions of the ‘Spanish Armada’s’.

Even without needing to resort to Google to refresh my historical knowledge, I had an inkling that the parallels were not meant to be flattering to the Spanish backed Hochtief blitzkrieging the Aussies.

I guess, going back to the 16^th century for the precedent they wanted to reference was a bit safer for the ‘like to play it careful’ journos than looking for a German equivalent of a more recent history.

Still, I wonder how many of the reporters that obligingly re-parroted the original story have paused even for a minute and thought through what they were truly implying by likening the new CEO of the ‘iconic Australian contractor’ to the head of the infamously stricken Spanish fleet?

There also was an almost palpable hint in most of these reports that ‘all was not lost’ for Hamish T, the disposed CEO, neither financially nor professionally, having bagged a handsome golden handshake and a public ‘no issue with his performance’ statement.

Still, while carefully sitting on the fence of ‘make-believe independence’ most media duly reported on the size of his parting package, yet none that I read ventured into any speculation of what his future steps could be.

Will he wait out a customary ‘grieving period’ and launch into a competing business himself or just spend the remaining years playing golf and guest-speaking at business luncheons?

Will there be a diplomatic role earmarked for him in one of the exotic places he’d so well connected with, an obvious career for a professional with a hair/smile feature-duo groomed to perfection.

Also don’t forget all the suits he must have amassed through his career – you’d not want to have those go to waste, heaven forbid eaten by the moths.

And anyway, barring some serious breakers in his severance package, why would he be ‘mothballing’ his career at the age of 50 or so?

After all, he should be ahead of the Spanish/Germans’, at least on the Aussie construction turf with his understanding of the ‘real value’ of the deal they were obtaining by so eagerly wanting to own a large part of Leighton.

True, there are tangible parts of the business that if sold quickly and smartly may turn into some real money, there may even be numerous projects that will be closed without making significant losses, however the ‘real juicy future’ this Armada may be banking on, that is based on a steady supply of government civil, infrastructure and building projects for years and years to come could be a bit less of a ‘sure thing’.

Take away the tangibles and what you’re left with is, the ‘goodwill’ of the company.

And, it’s not called ‘goodwill’ for nothing…

Mr T should go back to his own-and-fellow Leightoners’  experiences in misjudging this component at acquisitions Leighton had made in the past – and in this case use what was learned from the mistakes they made to his own advantage.

In this industry connections mean more than anything else, the ‘who you know’ over the ‘what you know’, rules it, pretty much globally.

He could set up a rival company, pick the good bits out of Leighton and entice them over to the new business and then beat the now foreign-owned Leighton to the meaty Aussie projects the government will put out on offer in the future.

And if he plays it right, he may be able to pull the same scam off in parts of Asia that Leighton has been historically strong too.

For a little while yet, anyway.

picture from here:

http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2014/03/13/1226854/209116-140314-b-leightons.jpg

Christmas had come early for Hamish Tyrwhitt this year, early and bearing gifts.

Finally, a May to look forward to, for the recently unmade, i.e. ex Leighton CEO, on full pay and in peace.

No nervous twitching of the stomach muscles, no worrying migraines, sleepless nights before another uncomfortable annual meeting.

No rowdy shareholders to pacify and over-ambitious journalists to answer to.

Not even random bloggers like me, to worry about.
Not that he would see this since he blacklisted me some months ago.

He’s been let off the hook.

True, in reality, he got dumped pretty bad, kicked out of his plush position that he hung onto with his bare fingers for quite a while…

… but no real Aussie would ever see it that way, let alone confirm it publicly, not after what he’d done for the company, the AEC industry, the country.

Especially after they see the German/Spanish arrogance swooping into the country and loudly claiming what they rightly think to be their own.

Yes, the new owners may have paid for this, yes they may even have the paperwork to prove it, but they know nothing about the Australian people if they think they can have ’Leighton’ – just, like that!

Does not really matter what colour the flag this ship is sailing under, if it’s not the ozzie version of the Union Jack, it counts for little.

Sure, they can have the shoddy bits, the ‘job-for-life’ attitude, the ‘pubbing on any day in the week’ and ‘sleep it off on construction sites afterwards’ practices. The myths of promises of becoming one of Wally’ boys and getting banished to Hong Kong, Malaysia or the Middle East, with everything these trips will burden one’s poor soul with…

They can bring the Spanish brigade to teach this old toothless granny how to suck eggs…

But…they will never get the other side of the coin….

And I wonder.. if Hamish Tyrwhitt IS finally getting it….

…if the ‘proverbial’ coin has finally dropped.

What will make for the  Spanish-German’s a  very difficult job to succeed in Australia is exactly the same ‘force’ he and his comrades have failed to foresee when in their arrogance went into conquering the Middle East, hastily and without thinking it through.

When they thought the ‘mate’ door will open doors everywhere and forever.

When they took things for granted.

A dangerous thing that is, taking anything for granted.

It is not only Hamish Tyrwhitt, that will need to learn this in the near future.

Picture from here: http://sourceable.net/leighton-chiefs-gone-as-hochtief-ups-offer/

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick!

I wonder how Jack is doing these days….

Jack was my colleague at Gammon, we started working for the company only weeks apart, in April/May 2013.

So much so, that we attended the mandatory official induction to the company together.

If asked, I guess that being a QS by profession he’d have no problem recalling the facts of the day-long presentation, including what was said about protection awarded to ’speaking out’ within Gammon, otherwise known as the official, ‘whistle blowing protection’ policy also covered by the BB umbrella.

…actually, Jack and I met a bit earlier, even before the induction meeting.

By chance, at the end of one of Thomas Ho’s (CEO) briefings, we walked out of the building together. This flash corporate event that Gammon held every 2 months for its top managers was the first for both of us to have the privilege to be invited to.

It was late at night on a Thursday and we were descending on foot from the Jockey Club down to Causeway Bay, searching for the MTR.

Fellow expats, with some common ME experience, we quickly compared notes; We had children of similar ages, my spouse on his way to join me with the kids, his more sensible, staying in the home country, but similar worries, similar concerns and both of us only just getting to know our employer.

Jack was a bit ahead of me, having come from a Balfour Beatty background, though he was eager to clarify that Gammon employed him directly, this was not a secondment.

As we parted that night, Jack probably thought it unlikely that we’d meet soon again and especially unlikely on his own project even though by then he knew the job had some BIM components to it, and I told him I was the person responsible for BIM in the company.

BIM was just a ‘techy’ add-on he seemed to think and presumably I was considered a geeky-techy (yet oddly old looking for that role) woman.

Jack’s was the project that the MTR decided to go on ‘all BIM-ish’ and something that me, the newly appointed HOI (Innovation) cum BIM ‘know it all’ could not afford to – and had no intention to ignore.

So, when we next met – at my insistence and within days of the PM briefing, I discussed with Jack and his superiors, what the project ought to do, to comply with the client’s requirements.

Action was needed urgently, as the deadlines for acting were well passed.

My goals were multiple, to comply with the BIM requirements set by the client, but also help the project become more effective, less risky and cheaper to deliver, this was after all, what I was brought in to help the company achieve.

We met numerous times following the first meeting and despite numerous presentations and various alternative strategies to ‘catch up’, the message that came back was always the same,’ the BIM strategy that was in place on the project before I joined the company was fine, nothing needed to change’.

The project’s management team’s intention was to do as little as they thought they could get away with, after all, ”MTR had no idea what they were  supposed to do” (were one of the director’s words);

In the meantime, Jack tried to keep his professional cloak on and act accordingly, but also retain his job, the two activities not always compatible.

… and yes, I got kicked out over the little affair…

Six month on, I do wonder how Jack is going?

Is he still on the MTR project?

Is he still toeing the party line while possibly taking the job and the company that employs him into financially and otherwise risky territories?

Is he still lucky enough to be able to push through financial (variation) claims against the client that is yet unequipped enough to act in line with the highly biased contract they have in hand and reject any claims that are not fully compliant with the conditions of it?

Or have the people that run this particular MTR project had since realised what a little gem they had in their hands?

A document that could, if used well make all of the contractors of the 11xx line not just perform but ‘uber-excel’?

Did that make the water of the project-pond of 1111 just a bit too hot to Jack’s liking?

Or even if this epiphany had not quite yet hit the MTR’s management, had he given up on the charade of Gammon’s dealings and wheelings on the project and moved back to Balfour Beatty?

It is hard to tell.

The LinkedIn profile that I suppose is his – but may be not too, shows almost 5 years of continuous service to BB up to the present time.

No mention of Gammon.

Picture from here:

http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=hes&p=1528

A silly Christmas/New Year’s present for the silly season

And the recipient is: me!

For those, less informed about the subject, according to Wikipedia: “In Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the silly season has come to refer to the Christmas/New Year festive period (which occurs during the summer season in the Southern Hemisphere) on account of the higher than usual number of social engagements where the consumption of alcohol is typical.”

Thanks to the silly season (I guess) bang on Christmas Eve, I received a direct email from Mr Hamish Tyrwhitt, Leighton Holdings’ CEO, where he implies, that the delivery of my (previously sent) message has been prevented due to my email address getting ‘blacklisted’.

So, after accepting messages from me written over various intervals for 13 months– he finally, says, ‘that’s it – no more’;

With the same move he also confirms indirectly, that he had received all of the ones I sent before getting ‘blacklisted’.

(part of the first ones I sent  is copied here, just to give a bit of a taste of topics I wanted for him to look at, for those in the know);

Thank you, Mr Tyrwhitt for clearing this issue up for me!

I can (obviously) no longer write to you directly, but I’m sure, someone else will forward you my thanks.

Have a happy New Year!

Z

From: Zolna Murray
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2012 3:54 PM
To: Riad T. Sadik; mohammed@habtoor.com; hamish.tyrwhitt@leighton.com.au; peter.gregg@leighton.com.au
Subject: blowing the whistle, again and again…
Importance: High

Good afternoon gentlemen!

 I’ve been with the company for just over 18 months.

I could have saved the company at least that many times 10 millions of dirhams had my advice been listened to by my superiors.

You may think you’ve seen it all and you can quietly tidy up the mess and close up the company with no damage to yourselves and those that own it.

Or at least no more damage than what has been already assessed.

You are wrong.

 Mafraq will blow up and haunt you for years. Qusahwira will too, as well as ADIB.

Al Bustan is nothing even close to being managed and will cost you hundreds of millions of dirhams to defend.

 I would be pleased to explain my reasons behind the above statements and strategies to recover, given the chance.

Regards,

Zolna Murray

A simple post, with a simple question: How long can one channel large amounts of operational money into the black hole of HLG until one gets caught out?

Don’t look for the answer to this question in my blog and do not hold your breath for getting it freely from anyone in charge of HLG or its parent companies.

Regardless of total ‘lack of evidence’ out in the ‘open’, I believe that there is money coming in to cover operational costs of this company from ‘elsewhere’ and this ‘fact’ is almost as obvious as that, the greenery would not survive in the UAE without constant water-supply feeding it at ground level.

Why do I care? After all, I’m all but at arm’s length from this company now.

(Thankfully, one might add).

Call it professional duty. Or conscience, if you prefer a softer, though somewhat idealistic term.

Sadly, you may label this continuous interest of mine in the above named topic as a personal ‘obsession’ and that will not be far from the truth either, I’ll admit.

In fact, with Christmas coming, my main wish (apart from the obvious – of reuniting my immediate family in one place) would be for three parties to answer the question from the title, those being:

José Antonio López-Monís (CEO and Managing Director HLG), Hamish Gordon Tyrwhitt (Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Leighton Holding) AND the current AUDITOR(s) for these two companies;

Can I make a speculative guess, that in the unlikely event of this question getting addressed by the first two gentlemen named  in any public forum any time soon, the response will start with the ‘to my knowledge…’ preamble?

What a perfect combination of three simple words to let one off-the hook of being party to the unsavoury practice of blunt misleading! (of shareholders, for example);

I did not know it, probably never happened.

The auditors on the other hand, may opt for a different tactic and classify these ‘cash injections’ as ‘Miscellaneous Petty cash’ – never a more appropriate use for this term, in my book. Petty, that is.

Anyway, who am I to set out what amount of money (measured in probably millions) can be classified as a bit excessive for ‘petty cash’ spent on  propping up a sinking company as opposed to just a bit of cash-flow-assistance?

You know, to ‘tie us over’ money?

Mr Habtoor, as one of the shareholders of this troubled entity is proving to be a bit savvier than I’ve given him credit to be, in the past;

One lesson he definitely has learned as a successful businessman is that ‘Throwing good money after bad’ is not a good practice – so he is staying very much clear of doing it.

Weak promises he does make, to the partners and the world, just to keep the ‘water supply’ trickling in, with the hope that all the troubled projects HLG are associated with will be completed before ‘the pipes’ run dry or someone cuts them off.

In my humble opinion, that hope of his is a bit too optimistic, but let’s wait for the final curtain to descend onto this little performance, before we make any judgments!

Picture from here:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-watering-palm-tree-alley-image21340281

Someone is holding someone else to ransom here and seriously so… and I can still not figure out how the roles are dished out in this tragi-comedy that HLG is….

One friend says, I’ve got it all wrong, the Aussies run the show, no matter what the Spanish say or do;

Another says, nope – the Arabs are in charge and are giving the Aussies the run-around.

A third one warns, the Germans are being too quiet – making for an unlikely calmness to a storm coming.

The forth quietly tells me to but out of the whole thing… it is not worth a thought…

Just as the media following the happenings around HLG (and Leighton Holdings) my friends like to hang a lot of their analyses on the 800+ million dollar loan that the company received from Leightons some time ago – as both the question and answer to all possible future scenarios.

Far from wanting to belittle this ‘tidy little sum’ of money invested in this wobbly company, I find it weird that so many people choose to ignore the forest from the trees (or other way around) and the almost public knowledge that dozens of currently run HLG projects will become major financial liabilities in the future – if not already fighting for bare survival and in a ‘disastrous’ stage.

Today, Mr Al Habtoor ‘awarded’ his latest gem-of-a-project to HLG and was quoted saying:

 “I have confidence in the Habtoor Leighton Group. HLG has built some of the most prominent landmarks in Dubai and the UAE – including Terminal 3 at the Dubai International Airport, the world famous Burj Al Arab and The Officers’ Club in Abu Dhabi.”  (ref see link below)

There are 79 projects listed on HLG’s website, out of those, he selected to mention 3, that were completed with no involvement from the ‘L’ part of the ‘current’ company, most done well before they were even in the picture, one in the early 1990s, some twenty years ago. In fact if those projects were to be mentioned at all, good manners would have dictated credits given to some major (if not vital) JV partners also active on them.

But who am I to give Mr Habtoor lessons on good manners when the poor chap has a virtual gun pointed at his neck. (according to one of the many likely/speculative theories of what really is happening, that I entertain).

And as comic some of these shenanigans have become, I find it hard to treat Mr Habtoor’s words and actions as cleverly manicured PR campaigns, just see them as blunt manipulations of everyone involved.

A ‘class action’ anyone?

Where are all the ‘international trade-exchanges’ these companies are listed on when you really need them for a bit of scrutiny?

Mr Habtoor, if you feel compelled to justify your choice of a contractor for a construction project (which as a private investor you are not obliged to do) why not quote some current projects of HLG instead, for a real, feel-good impact?

Talk to us of present ‘happy clients’, a hospital operator, a local mixed development owner from the royal family, a bank or a national oil company?

What about the dozens of ‘live’ bids that HLG had been involved over the last 6 years that swallowed millions of dollars yet brought in no new projects?

Airports, hospitals, numerous large hotels, entire railways systems, shopping malls, a museum, World islands too?

Why not list those as proofs of confidence to a company that can spend up large on phantom bids and still survive?

Let’s call a spade-a-spade: this is just another ‘buying time’ game – and trust me, with time, I’ll figure out who will win and who will lose in this game in the long run.

Time, I still have. (I think - or hope);

http://sbr.com.sg/commercial-property/more-news/hlg-awarded-395m-al-habtoor-city-residential-towers-project-in-dubai

'Balfour Beatty joint venture awarded £121 million contract for the Ministry of Defence!'

….Shouts a news-release from yesterday.

People share it over social media (LinkedIn, for example);

Share it and/or ‘like it’.

People enjoy good news, especially those related to the company they work for.

People despise whingers that constantly complain about the company they work for.

I’m one of those people that do the latter, and on my list of favourite whinging targets is Balfour Beatty.

And I do not even work for that company, which makes the employees of it even more upset about my actions.

So, I get despised, sneered at, mocked and ridiculed, occasionally receive patronising or downright nasty hate-mails.

Yet, in my own disillusioned state of mind, I keep on thinking that my questioning is valid and deserves honest answers or at least a response to each.

For example, I thought it fair and reasonable to ask Andrew Hayward, head of Ethics, Risk and Assurance the following question yesterday:

Dear Andrew,

A couple of weeks have gone by since you last heard from me – you must have felt relieved, that I had finally given up on the doomed little campaign I was trying to instigate – by and large unsuccessfully, and got on with my normal life which I must have had once, otherwise I would have never been employed by a BB subsidiary in the first place.

For now, I reserve the right not to disclose my future plans on this subject to you or others. Regardless, I believe to have the right to ask you to tell me the name and full contact details of the person you are reporting to.

I expect to receive this information within the next 24 hours.

Best regards,

Zolna

I knew the timeframe I nominated was reasonably short, so I sent the same request to another couple of people that would (or at least should have) known the correct answer, in case Andrew took an early Christmas break or was otherwise busy, yet no response came from anyone.

Thankfully, I have a large number of BB-connections in my LinkedIn network so, I’ll address them directly:

Help a brother (sister) out!

Let me know who oversees the work of the Ethics committee of your (Balfour Beatty) company.

(email is zolna.murray@gmail.com and privacy is guaranteed for any info given in confidence);

Realistically speaking, there is almost a zero chance that I will get any meaningful info back following this plea;

On the other hand, writing to all of these people will at least provide me with another little experiment:

In a day-or-two I’ll know how many BB connections will keep me on their own networks having received this request.

Finally, it all makes sense… Sort of. (speculation, truth and fiction on the subject of the HLG affair in the ME)

My latest theory is this: In spite of all my previous predictions, (including yesterday’s post)  Mr Habtoor will walk away from HLG scratch free and leave the tab for Mr Sadik to pick up as the company called HLG turns into custard in the very near future.

And (probably) rightly so.

After all, wasn’t Mr Sadik the naughty boy that conspired with the Leighton-brothers and got out on his own, unchecked, unapproved?

By disregarding old alliances he went into sabotaging the parent company, in spite of the’ whole ball of wax’ Mr Habtoor had done for him over their long association as business partners!

Mr Habtoor gave him everything that a talented and hardworking, yet displaced and disadvantaged Palestinian young engineer could hope for.

A piece of a sweet pie, a citizenship to a country few of his type can hope for, money, luxury, fame.

A business outside of the reach of the jittery construction market, a bite at the hospitality industry, his own hotel.

He even let Mr Sadik be the chairman of the newly formed alliance with the greedy Australians once HLG was born, the only condition was to have his younger boy in the board too, as an apprentice to learn the trade.

The boy needed some hands-on experience beyond collecting and driving expensive cars, this was not a lot to ask for and could have also been easily the ticket back to Mr Habtoor’s heart, had Mr Sadik recognised so and genuinely undertook to mentor the young chap.

Unfortunately, and at the cost of the long lasting friendship of Mr Sadik and the Habtoor chief, the future that the Savage-lead, ‘quasi Leighton team’ had waived before Mr Sadik’s eyes was too hard to ignore, let alone resists, full of glitter, status, privileges and class.

Directorships at various international companies, people that truly needed him for once, and  no-more, around the clock checking of dusty construction sites, cheap coffees, paper cups and needy Pilipino draftsmen and women to tend to.

He got dazzled by it all, enjoyed the bliss. And paid the price. Or will so, in the future.

Far away minefields of diamonds and gold were calling while local construction sites went for months unchecked, down the tube of disastrous delays, defects and cost overruns.

Arrogant, negligent and incompetent Leighton staff led the disenfranchised Pilipino drafting army.

It could have been easily assumed, that Mr Habtoor knew what the end chapter of this fairy-tale was going to be all along – alternatively maybe, he made it up as the story was unfolding and let his once-friend walk in the trap he dug himself.

Regardless of the preambles, the results were similar and brutal:

These days, Mr Habtoor is all but ready to jump ship, abandon the construction-arm of his multiple mega-businesses, once a fundamental part of success, now a shrivelled body part – not-good for anything, something to kick aside with petty – leave to Mr Sadik to salvage – or sink with it.

Either way Mr Habtoor will not be around to see the final chapter.

Too much other stuff to do.

‘Has he walked away from Leighton? Did the journalist know of them at all?’

Writes my husband in an email to me this morning, with the scanned feature article written on Mr Khalaf  Al Habtoor published in the latest Gulf Business magazine attached.

It is my father’s birthday today (83 and seriously ill) and, we are half a world away from him  – and from each other, technically homeless with two teenage daughters out of school and in someone else’s care…but my husband’s primary interests are in synch with mine.

I bought the same magazine 2 days ago in transit at the airport in Dubai – lured to it by its cover, hopeful to finally find the answer to the question that has bothered me for the last 3 years:

Has the Grand Mr Habtoor fallen into and does he continue to be the a victim of a ‘massive and evil’ manipulation scammed by the Leighton management or is he the shrewd businessmen that he likes to portray, that will indeed come out of this affair unscathed?

Personally, I am still in favour of scenario 1 – to the extent that I can publicly promise to ’eat one of my shoes’ if the second theory turns out to be correct – not that anyone seem to care much about my dietary habits or even what the truth is in this case.

The big boys on the two sides are fighting BIG with their PR machines all fired up – small ‘barking fish’ like me are just a minor nuisance, if anything at all.

It would be a self-contained ‘little’ culturally-charged affair, if the game I’m referring to was purely between Leighton Holdings and Mr Habtoor, one side trying to save face of the Wall King empire under the attack of allegedly deeply set-in, globally spread corruption and the other working on conserving his, when confronted by dozens of large scale building-projects turning rapidly into financial disasters impacting on numerous big name co-patriots.

This is no game of two halves.

For whatever reason, the many others involved and impacted by it are still and ‘by and large’ staying quiet, waiting for the ‘rope’ to swing a bit more decisively onto one side or the other.

For a start, there are many-many big name and themselves very powerful clients of HLG operating in the region that have been sold a ‘lemon’ and are scrambling to get their projects finished and save what is saveable while being fed empty promises by Habtoor’s favourite schmoozers, quite often the quietly humble and understated Mr confidante Riad Tawfik Al Sadik himself.

Then, there are the armies of subcontractors, from relatively small to very large corporations caught up working on mismanaged, negligently and amateurishly run sites, themselves paid late, if ever, intimidated into walking away empty handed, bitter and cheated.

At the bottom of the pile of marginalized are the ‘honest’ employees of the old Habtoor Engineering Enterprise, often dropped by arrogant Leighton-faithful managers after decades of steady and loyal work or the few good western-bred professionals left within the ranks that the Habtoor flavoured HR can no longer stomach because they know too much.

Bizarrely though and for me most amazing is the silence that ‘comes’ from those that are in ‘reality’ the owners of this ‘naughty child’ that HLG has turned into almost immediately after its birth, neither Hochtief, nor ACS appear to have the ability or willingness to put their foot down and sort the mess out before it takes their own share prices down on its way of inevitable self-destruction.

I will not even try to put a number to the people (including ‘everyday mom-and-dad shareholders’) that will be negatively impacted by the domino effect triggered, if the truth of inability of HLG to complete even one project on time to the promised quality and price really comes to surface?

Or when someone financially literate does a proper audit of its books and is game enough to faithfully report on the sorts of moneys that had been spent on chasing projects in the region the company realistically never had the slightest chance to land?

Or count the number of highly paid employees that are still occupying its expensive offices to produce meaningless reports as phantom bids and work overtime to keep the floodgates of disaster from opening?

Because, if markets did work as they are supposed to and publicly listed companies did abide by the rules then the risk of domino effect that will sweep over shareholders big and small, private and institutional that invested in this trio of companies (Leighton, Hochtief , ASC) would be hardly there. They could all sleep easy without the worry of HLG blowing up and taking them down any time soon and I would not need to guess the number of financially aggrieved that will be very large once this company does hit the wall.

As I look at the measuredly cheerful image of the confident Mr Habtoor on the cover of the Gulf Business I can be fooled that all is well and rosy in his empire and this bleak destiny of a company that is so closely associated with his name I am predicting will never happen.

Still, I’m vary of the manicured smile and I cannot agree with my husband’s presumption from the title that Mr Habtoor could, even if wanted to under any circumstance, just walk away from HLG – it is far too late for that.

‘Legacy projects’ and some tips for Leighton’s auditors…

Most people that read my writings know that English is not my native language.

Lots of them often compliment me, how they think I have a reasonable command over it.

Still, every time I set out to do any type of research that involves Leighton Holdings or its subsidiaries; my understanding of the English language is put to a major test;

Take, for example this statement from their website:

“CONTINUOUS DISCLOSURE

Continuous disclosure of the Group’s activities is a legal necessity for a publicly-listed company such as Leighton Holdings, and is essential in maintaining shareholder confidence and market trust.”

Are they kidding me? Or is this really serious?

I can scroll through hundreds of pages of reports, media releases and whatnots and still have absolutely no confidence that this is not just a carefully crafted PR blurb set out to manipulate me.

OK, maybe not me, I have too much inside knowledge, but everyone else, the media, present and future shareholders.

Still, even without having 'insider knowledge', it is hard to imagine that anyone will fall unquestionably for these publications that are closer to highly made-up political campaign-boards then serious company reports that one can trust.

The one area that I know a bit more about than the others LH operates in, are the workings of HLG (Habtoor Leighton Group in the Middle East);

So, naturally, I look for anything that is relevant to the performance of this subsidiary as I read their ‘reports’.

In one of the latest official reports the writing is ‘world-class’;

Reads almost like a school report;

Habtoor Leighton Group (HLG)

The Group’s business in the Middle East, HLG, showed some signs of improvement. (1) HLG achieved a break-even result during the first half and recovered funds from UAE legacy projects. (2) The region’s macroeconomic environment has stabilised and a robust pipeline of projects is being pursued. (3)

The decision of a Qatar-based client to call bonds on certain legacy projects delayed HLG from making repayments on Leighton’s outstanding shareholder loans during the period. HLG believes its legal position on the matter is strong and it is working to a resolution. (4)

HLG’s focus continues to be the collection of receivables and ‘IPO-ready 2016’ remains the target. The business is diversifying its sector and geographic base, and it continues to secure new work.

Naturally and unfortunately I have no access to any of the full financial reports of HLG (oh, how I wish I did) to scrutinise them in any detail;

Also, and sadly, for what I learned over the last couple of years of the media (global or local) outlets, it is also unlikely that any of them will any time soon seriously investigate what these guys are up to; (apart from a couple that may yet come up with the goods, wait-and-see);

Still, aren’t there some ‘paid’ auditors employed by these and other listed companies, that have the professional responsibility to question what these companies are doing and publishing on the way?

I really wish they did, but honesty, I’m not holding my breath. And if the current auditors are listed somewhere on Leighton’s website with their contacts, sorry, I did miss them, otherwise I would have given them a bit of free publicity just as I had done for Deloitte & Touche in my post yesterday.

Regardless of my omission, here are a couple of pointers to look into for those auditors, all based on the short paragraph published by LH above and related to the performance of HLG:

1 – really? I worked there for exactly two years; a large group of highly paid professionals was constantly working on a large number of bids that never eventuated into real projects for HLG.

All projects won that I had some insight into (at least 4) were either terribly late, over budget or both;

2 – really? Can these ‘legacy’ project be listed one-by-one? Projects post-merger with Habtoor (i.e. since HLG was born) can technically not be called legacy project, or can they?

3 – really? Would any of the company’s management be prepared to bet personal money on any of the current ‘phantom bids’ eventuating into real projects? Can this ‘robust pipeline’ get quantified?

4 – really? Based on what? A media war on a weaker media player with a much stronger ‘factual’ case in hand?

As I shift my weary eyes from this sad, sick, corrupt industry to the media that is supposed to keep it in check, I can’t help but end up looking for the ‘auditors’ that seem to failing also in what they are supposed to be doing and creaming the process financially yet sailing away unscathed.

They are definitely not very technically savvy if they are prepared to allow their audited parties to carry on like this (or they can be easily bought, God’forbid) and they may feel to be in the right zone by covering their own butts with lots of ‘small print’ at the end of their  reports freeing them of any and all responsibilities from the wrong doings of their clients.

In my mind, - and happy to stand alone holding this view – no small print will free them being a party to something that can be classified confidently as a ‘large scale crime’.

(picture came from a cafe street board)

A forewarning to Balfour Beatty’s auditors…

Creative bookkeeping and dressing up of annual reports to sooth worried investors into a ‘blissful state of contentment’ is a skillset one specialises-for over a lifetime.

A skillset, that is ‘not really my cup of tea’.

I prefer the pathological side of looking at these and other contractual documents and love the process of systematic unpicking of ‘one-liners’ within annual reports to see what exactly lies behind them.

Like, in the case of HLG (Habtoor Leighton Group) a private company owned partially by a public one and Gammon, operated under the guardianship of two listed entities.

Both currently enjoy being in a position of sitting at an arm’s length from the scrutiny of (possibly) rightly zealous representatives of institutional shareholders, thus often lulled into feeling that they are fully the masters of their own destinies.

And they get reckless.

Take Gammon, for example. You can walk the company’s corridors for months without feeling any influence of the major shareholders on how the company should be run, instead experience on your skin first-hand the deeply in-graved powers of decade-long ties between miniature kingdoms of long-term managers and directors.

Not that Gammon is unique in this behaviour.

To be honest, even after a number of decades of direct involvement with the corporate world, I’m not sure if auditors do more than just give their stamp of approval for whatever the management of the said  (audited) company have dreamed up.

When it comes to Gammon, I hardly expect it to be any different either, from what I know about the management and how they operate.

I can, of course hope for a better treatment this time and ask:

Will the auditors question the overheads of the dubious BIM group, bundled up in the 10ns of millions of (HK) dollars?

Will they ask why they hired me at the cost of hundreds of thousands of (HK) dollars, just to drop me after 11 weeks of service?

Will they call in the HR director for questioning? Get him to resign over this case?

Will they understand that on the MTR 1111 job, the contract is such that the ability to claim in the future is extremely limited, no matter what the directors' forecasts say and predicted cash flows show?

Will they question the person that signed that contract?

Or the one that refused to review it and put some basic risk management measures in place even after numerous prompts to do so?

The one that fired me over questioning the entire process?

Unlikely.

Still, let me give the current auditors a tip: do look into this job in a bit more detail!

Interview the project directors, the executive director, the commercial managers and the BIM-director!

Watch them speak, see how they do make up their stories. Ask them about the ability for the company to claim for ‘unforeseable’ issues a year down the track, even two or three.

Ask them if their is a possibility of finding their hands tied in the future when trying to recover for money for extra work done because of their present less-affair approach for the client mandated BIM requirements as well as their total ignorance at the outset of the contract for the same?

Do your job. Dig deep!

Unfortunately, your reward for getting to the bottom of the case may be similar to mine and get dropped.

But you may get dropped regardless.

In which case you may save face. Yours and your company’s. Long term, that may be the better option.

Take this as an honest warning.

If the pride and joy of UK construction was caught acting a bit naughty, would the UK media care?

My guess: NO;

Still, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and put it to a test to see if anyone will investigate;

My story: I was hired and fired by a Balfour Beatty subsidiary in a way that does not comply with their own published values and policies.

BB’s story: Nothing unethical had been done in this case, a conclusion made not based on an indipendent investigation but the opinion of one person;

OK by the UK media?

(most of background info needed is available on my two blogs)

http://debunkthebim.blogspot.com/

http://gammonandfriends.blogspot.com/

Balfour Beatty must be a very scary place to work at.

No matter how soft-a-tone I take on to address my fellow ex-colleagues with, (second removed) from the large Balfour Beatty family and ask for some information that could hardly be considered confidential or even provocative – a deep silence is all I get.

For a while I thought I had a direct-line into the ‘brotherhood’, an official person, ready to be spoken to through the language of reason.

Today he cut off this perceived life-line :

“Please treat this email as bringing a close to our correspondence.”  wrote Andrew Hayward to me in an email as a response to another message sent to someone else within his company

(Andrew Hayward: Balfour Beatty plc: Head of Ethics, Risk and Assurance;)

I don’t know if Kafka, Kundera or even George Orwell’s writings had ever featured in Mr Hayward’s education but I personally can’t help but see his ‘remarkable arrogance for an appointed judge and jury’ worthy of some of these writers’ protagonists, when he notes in the same message to me:

“I also refer to my earlier email, explaining that, in my opinion, Gammon has acted in accordance with its contractual rights and that no breach of Gammon’s or Balfour Beatty’s Code of Conduct has been credibly alleged. As such, no further investigation is warranted under our whistle-blowing policy or otherwise.”

Of course, we are still quibbling over the Gammon affair. Or I am.

He dismisses the allegation with no interest in the evidence.

Or my side of the evidence, anyway.

This statement of his also nonchalantly draws a ‘fat black line’ over my professional credibility as the person making those allegations – something that I continue to find hard to tolerate.

It would be easier to swallow this idea of being a deceptive tell-tale if I had the assurance of Mr Hayward that those professionals that hired me in the first place (such a lowlife) at a significant expense to the company had been put through the wringer for negligent behaviour themselves and will never place the company into the risk of a person of my ‘calibre’ being appointed, let alone supported aggressively into such un-unfitting position as I had been.

As for one of my allegations, that the mismanagement of a group of directors of one of the projects the subsidiary is involved in has put the parent company under undue risk and will potentially cause high loss of revenue in the future, that according to Mr Hayward ‘has no credibility’, I have written another post on my other blog;

Not as much to ‘clear my name’ but to reignite some dialog on how mandated BIM on mega sized rail projects works (or does not as in this case), partially because the Qatar Metro development is presently getting kicked into action and other large global-BIM projects are scrambling for advice on how to handle some pretty ambitious BIM specs.

This story is definitely about how not to do it…

Check it out:

http://debunkthebim.blogspot.com/2013/11/bim-101-for-andrew-hayward-balfour.html

picture from here

http://www.ibclegal.com/event/world-bribery-and-corruption-compliance-conference/speaker/id/andrew-hayward_balfour-beatty-plc

What a small world! (or a large Balfour Beatty?);

I’ve been kind-of busy lately with some minor ‘shifts in my life’ and failed to keep up with the developments of the UK BIM Government initiative that will be the ‘game changer’ (ref 1) for the global AEC industry, according to many ‘in the know’;

For this post let’s attribute the original idea of the ‘game changer’ to Patrick MacLeamy - Chief Executive Officer of HOK (as quoted in the publication of ref 1).

Today is a bit of an easy day for me, being officially unemployed and uninterested in any serious house cleaning, so I decided to look up how the counting down to the big event in the UK was going?

As with big games in many large cities I lived in, by now I’d be expecting a big countdown clock to have been installed on Trafalgar Square, maybe the last Olympic Games’ one repurposed?

Having no one in London to check this for me, I instead went to Google – looked at the top results on the topic from the past month (ref 2) and bingo!

Got the updates straight ‘from the horse’s mouth’:

“Bentley’s BIM conference: London excelling; Australia needs to catch up”; (ref 3)

Unfortunately, the article is a bit one sided, (after all, the author disclosed to have been the guest of Bentley) – though for a bit of background and credibility the text allocates a large chunk to “David Philp, head of BIM for international construction and consultancy firm Mace…” (ref 4) who is often quoted boldly quantifying the reasons for the UK BIM mandating this ‘no-brainer’…

I got intrigued:

I know this name! Head o BIM at MACE Group? (ref 5) the last I remembered, he was heading the UK Government’s BIM initiative… OK… Anyone can change jobs… or even fulfil multiple roles…good old Private-Public partnership (ref 6) – not much of an arm-length here….But I’m so often told UK is the ‘mothership’ of transparency and democracy…

And then….The biggest surprise of all! (I must have been living under a rock for the last 20 years);

Up till moving to Mace, Mr Philp was Mr BIM for Balfour Beatty! (ref 7) – for 2 decades! Wow!

Is this not the same company that is still failing to provide me ‘with its whistleblowing policy that will protect’ its subsidiary’s employees in case of them voicing genuine concerns about directors behaving negligently?

Maybe I should have asked Mr Philp to intervene for me instead of bothering the ethical committees and whatnots?

Someone of such BIM reputation would in no time confirm my concerns were genuinely in the company’s interest (re MTR for example?);

Sadly, he left BB by the time my troubles started with them.

Promisingly though for me, according to another article (ref 8) “Balfour Beatty chief executive Mike Peasland was appointed as the chair of a new BIM supply chain working group, supporting the government’s BIM task group”.

My LinkedIn search brings up only one Mike Peasland currently employed by BB as an MD (regional) (ref 9) – but either way, as a CEO or an MD, obviously a fellow BIM enthusiast, he should really be in a very good position to speed up the resolution of my case.

I am about to send him a little nudge!

After all, the UK BIM initiative is moving somewhere….and working for someone…

Someone else…(but me)

References here: http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/references-to-article-20131110

http://www.balfourbeatty.com/index.asp?pageid=18 (map from here)