Incidentally we found a young expatriate engineer, a recent Overseas University ME graduate who happened to be in Turkey as a tourist, but anyhow prolonged his stay due to a love affair with a young local girl in Ankara. He was looking for a part time job.
So we hired this young expatriate gentlemen full time at site for one year. We paid him high end of four-digit US Dollar monthly salary, plus paid all his taxes and reimbursed his living and travelling expenses such as hotel accommodation, rental car, PC and cellular phone.
He had no experience nor any capability to lead the project. Moreover he had a stiff Southern accent not so easy to understand. Anyhow we also put one local senior engineer at site to handle everything for an increment of expatriate expenses. That was "cost of business", that we had to pay.
Similarly we hired another expatriate Civil engineer quite senior for Kemerkoy Thermal power plant FGD project (EUAS), another for Textile- based energy companies Bursa (Bisas) and Yalova (AkEn) for their combined cycle power plant construction.
For a big local private company in their Bursa combined cycle power plant extension project, our foreign partner sent a senior German expatriate engineer to our site who was completely illiterate in computer skills, even unable to type the keyboard. His monthly payment was similar to above. So we employed a competent Turkish engineer to handle the necessary Project Management at site.
Despite of their professional incompetence, the most of the time they even humiliated our local engineers as in the case of utility size power plant constructions. These once proud foreign companies were later bankrupt and there is now practically no responsible identity for their leftover disaster projects.
Those were just because our senior decision makers were not confident of the capabilities of our young Turkish engineering graduates. Time is different now.
It is not too far that they should understand that work is same everywhere, and the same hardware, softwares are used in every design and project management offices, not only in US, Europe or Japan, but also in China, India, Korea and also in Turkey.
In the past, our local private enterprise companies worked as subcontractor of leading international companies in thermal power plant/ industrial plant constructions with available qualified and semi qualified local workforce.
They had enough experience for project management of such simple "civil works and site installation" facilities first in the local market, then they had enough confidence to work abroad, in the Middle East then in North Africa, Central Asia and even in the Western Europe.
We sent thousands of young labour force to these countries, we gave them 3-shifts of meal per day, a reasonable/ comfortable bed to sleep, a reasonable hourly payment slightly higher than prevailing local market rates, and then we asked them to work 12 hours per day, 7 days per week. We received many orders, and earned substantial amount of money.
But these good old days are over. International USA, European, Japanese companies placed these manual job subcontract orders to other cheap vendors, namely to Indian/ Korean/ Chinese companies.
These companies started to worked first as subcontractors and increased their scope and started to receive orders as the lead companies with full basic design, overall design, plus international guarantees. They received the orders as lead companies and distributed the subcontracting work to their own nationals
We went to Europe, while European workers were receiving minimum 7 Euros per hour and working maximum 39 hours per week, we hired our own manpower at 3 Euros per hour and let them work 12 hours per day, 7 days per week.
Initially governments were pleased since they were spending less, but labour unions/ parties were displeased. They applied to courts/ regulators and stopped our work. Now with their rules we cannot receive any further job in Europe for subcontracting work.
Furthermore some of our local subcontractors have entered legal dispute with those International lead companies, at such displeasing level that they can no longer work together.
Nowadays we have another very interesting development in the local market.
Chinese companies are constructing three CFB based thermal power plants in the local market. These new plants are in Biga, Beypazari and Sirnak. They bring 500+ qualified labor to the each site for civil works and site installation activities.
Our laws and regulations don’t prohibit them to bring such large scale labour inflow. Other than that, our local investors don’t care about quality/ performance/ efficiency, all they care about the cheapest price.
The cheapest price is the virtue of Chinese companies. When you declare the expected cheapest price in any tender, Chinese have always a better price than that.
There are explanations that these new foreign workers are either soldiers or young prisoners with good manners. They work hard, 12 hours per day, 7 days per week, in a civilised environment, with a clean bed to sleep, 3 shifts of good meal.
Chinese companies are getting the order turn-key, complete with design, fabrication, procurement, leaving almost nil to the local partner. They are much cheaper than the Western companies, although they are rather inexperienced/ or shy in their early design. Sometimes they can’t meet the guaranteed figures, expected performances.
It is a common saying that
"Chinese companies have no backbones. They have very flexible ethics"
which means certain red-flag warnings in application of anti-corruption measures.
Earlier we hoped that service business- civil works and site installation would be ours at all times, by all means. Not any more.
Now it is time to create our own technologies as lead companies, there is no more subcontracting. We need to focus on high value, high technology items; not only the traditional construction. Many of our companies are focused on working as "contractors" with only interest in the "C" (construction) of the "EPC" contracts. Engineering is usually a small part of the project but the procurement is a big ticket, where a lot of profit is. Taking economics into account, the companies need to focus on turn key projects to build the expertise we are talking about.
When I explain these thoughts, local decision makers of big private local contracting companies start to stare at me with empty faces, but time has changed, so they should also be changed/ restructured accordingly, otherwise they will face the consequences, since it is the world of the fittest.
Early this week we have been very pleased to learn that
Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (MENR) together with
Turkish Electricity Generation Public Company (EUAS)
have released a new tender for design activities to obtain design drawings for minimum 170 MWe electricity generating power plant which will fire local indigenous coal in pulverised or CFB firing methods.
Contract is purely for steam boiler design activities to obtain drawings for 3-different local coal samples,
We understand that the local interested engineering parties would be in need of necessary design software/ hardware and young local engineering talents to finalise the design work within 270 calendar days. Priced proposals will be collected on 22nd March 2007.
Contract budget is estimated not to exceed a figure of 20 million US Dollars.
For such a big mega project, one company can not handle all work so consortiums will be formed. A location in a university technopark will be a preferable place to work in order to utilize the hardware/ software backbone as well as available engineering/ academic workforce.
That is an extra ordinary development in the local market, a great opportunity for our engineering companies, to sail overseas.
We are very happy to learn that the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources showed confidence in local young engineering talent at last.
‘Beautiful days beckon us, lads, sunny days beckon.’ says Nazim Hikmet
Your comments are always welcome.
Haluk Direskeneli- Energy Analyst
ODTU ME’1973, Ankara MMO 6606
2012 National Coal Policy for Turkey
