1 2 -ICIT : 05-0 8

1. 12-ICIT:05-08

2. Organizational Excellence Journey: Critical Success Factors of Engineering Firms in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates Dr Hesham Magd, Dr Abdel Moniem Ahmed E-TQM College, Dubai, UAE & Mr Salah El Din Adam Hamza SOFCON, Consulting Engineering Co. Saudi Arabia 12th ICIT Conference, Taiwan April 9-11, 2007

3. Contents • Introduction • The engineering sector • Organizational excellence • Research Problem and objectives • Research methodology • Findings • Critical success factors • Conclusion and recommendations • Q & A

4. Introduction • Organizations are faced with major challenges on daily basis such as: • Making sense of conflicting priorities • Allocating limited resources • Understanding the impact of the organizations actions • Comparing performance with competitors and responding to customer needs in innovative ways • Balancing organizations efforts are daunting task, unless a systematic way is utilized • Organizations started moving the utilization of business excellence, as it enables organizations to: • Understand the complexities of the conflicting demands placed on organizations • Learn how to continuously improve the utilization of resources • Critical success factors are the concrete for achieving business excellence

5. The engineering sector • The engineering sector is booming in the Gulf region but is faced: • With constraints at scheduling • Workability • Constructability • the government is utilizing various techniques to enhance this sector through: • Encouraging alliances • Encouraging affiliations with international organizations

6. Organizational excellence • The engineering sector is focusing currently on business excellence, but what are the critical success factors that will enable the sector to achieve excellence • Critical success factors has covered many industries and there are various ones • The identification of the critical success factors early enough during the front end assessment of the engineering projects is vital for successful project completion

7. Research problem and objectives • Research problem • The availability of different critical success factors • It lacks the provision of a specified set of critical success factors applicable to the needs of the engineering firms in the Gulf region • These organizations are facing difficulties to meet external customer requirements • Current research objectives • The identification off appropriate critical success factors to engineering firms in order to enhance their performance and excellence

8. Research Methodology • Survey questionnaire was utilized • Permits use of large samples of respondents • Provides highly specific and precise numerical data • Results in high reliability • Allows for generalization from the sample • Sample of 256 engineering firms in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates were targeted • Research population consisted of managers, directors and owners • Usable data received from 114 manufacturing organizations representing 44.5% response rate

9. Organizational characteristics • Majority of the surveyed organizations (66%) had more than 10 years experience in the engineering sector • 92% of the surveyed organizations were ISO 9000 certified • 90% of the surveyed organizations were large organizations

10. Top Critical Success Factors in Achieving Organizational Excellence • Tier 1: Crucial factors • Technical resources • Internal communications • Planning and scheduling • Project management • Top management support • Leadership

11. Top Critical Success Factors in Achieving Organizational Excellence • Tier 2: Important Factors • Personnel • Project mission • Customer communication • Monitoring and feedback • Employee empowerment • Information technology • Training

12. Top Critical Success Factors in Achieving Organizational Excellence • Tier 3: least Important Factors • Urgency of the project • Power and politics

13. Conclusions • The engineering sector is booming in the Gulf region currently • The engineering sector is facing problems and various challenges • The identification and determination of critical success factors is believed to help alleviating engineering firms from their problems and help them to achieve organizational excellence • Several critical success factors were identified from the literature • These factors were tasted within a sample of engineering firms in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates • The level of importance of these factors were classified in three tiers • Tier one which is the most crucial for achieving organizational excellence seem to focus on the traditional factors without paying much attention to the importance of the soft factors.

14. Recommendations • To ensure future success of the engineering sector within the gulf region, they should focus on the soft factors as they are crucial in achieving organizational excellence

15. Reaching the EndThank you for listening Q & A