Friday, November 07, 2003

Bakun Project Damned Again

BAKUN DAMNED ONCE AGAIN - HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF

Bakun Dam project delay

The question of insufficient equipments as related by the consortium companies was puzzling as it was managed by a supposely dynamic and strong organizational team for that's why the project was awarded to them by the government of Malaysia. Many project management professionals & fello industry players had attributed the delay to reasons such as the lack of planning, lack of information, & possibly unforeseen circumstances was the main reason.

I'm am certainly sure that lack of planning by the project team members (excluding the top management) isn't the main cause of those failures as this would be a marked disrespect to those engineers and managers currently working on the project as the team currently handling the project are well experience and qualified people - people who had been with this project since the days of Ting Pek King & those who had been associated with Bakun project since the inception, and those who had been building dams over the last 20 years and the presence of experience sub-contractors.

What could have been unspoken and shielded may be the complex & disturbing relationship of the consortium members, their defined roles & responsibilities and the conflict among themselves as to the sharing of the cake & appointment of sub-contractors. Unless each consortium member are agreeable with their scope of work & role-play, the delay to the project is the natural outcome of poor (money)management.

Project cannot be run without proper and adequate fundings and at this very stage, the funding issue seem yet to be resolved. Santa Claus in the form of EPF (the rich Daddy) will be there soon as the call had come from non other than Syed Mokhtar, the main schemer. The irony is that the project was awarded to a consortium led by Syed Mokhtar who had convince the government that they had readily resources and the financial muscles (plus GIIG support) that is capable of undertaking & funding this size of project on a turnkey basis (BOT). If not I can't find an appropriate reason why the project was awarded to them.

If EPF is going to use the millions of contributors money to back the consortium, then the return on investment must be justified. I just wonder whether this is going to be another bailout like STAR LRT, PUTRA LRT & MAS, etc..... & EPF continues to pay dismal returns to the shareholders.