Calculate the total number of days you need to have the work done, and the number of people you need in the team. For South-East Asian country, it is sensible to add one additional day for project which requires 30 days to complete or more. This is for the rainy days. If your project needs 12 months to complete, add another 12 days, unless there is really no choice.
In your written contract agreement with the subcontractor, make it in writing that all technicians in your team must be certified ones and that should you remove any one of them, the subcontractor must be able to send a replacement by the following day. Unless this clause is included, you cannot complete your project on time, and without rework because when you sack a certain bad apple, the subcontractor will not send in a replacement. It is your project that will be delayed, not his. His employee will be working at other places by the next morning. It is also common in this part of the world that contractors show you a list of qualified technicians in your office. But those who turn up to work are different from the ones listed in the agreement.
For example, you have a job going on board a rig. The rig is leaving in three days, and your welders are caught smoking in no-smoking area on the rig. The superintendent catches them and kicks them out of the rig. You will not complete the job on time and the subcontractor will be laughing at you. You pay the compensation, not him. Verbal agreements are legal in some countries. Never accept an agreement verbally. You stand to lose, not the subcontractor.
Always have three subcontractors to quote for your project. It is the only way to find the best offer. It is also a good way to tell the contractors that they need to be cost effective. Make sure all the three quotations that come in are genuine ones, say, from Mr. Abdul Magha, Mr. Baskaran and Mr. Charlie AngMoh. It is common for a corrupt contractor to quote a project at exceptionally high fee, and he can still tell the other two contractors to quote very much higher than him. The three contractors take turn to suck money out of your company.
The above swindling method may seem negligiable if only one industrial concern is doing it in a country. If there are more than one thousand MNC doing it, it could be the startting point of a global finanincial crisis. Do you need a Bachelor Degree in economics to understand this?
The normal working hours must be adhered to. You cannot say because the lump sum has been paid and therefore the subcontractor’s crew can start work or stop work as they wish. If this is the case, the crew can come in to work at 1.00 pm and stop work at 9.00 pm. Won’t this schedule upset you project engineer or team leader’s routine?
Make sure that whatever job you want to proceed are clearly stated, especially in the blue prints so that the subcontractor have no chance to bother you. If the subcontractor’s crew is not able to interpret those blue prints, that is his problem. You have the right to cancel the agreement and look for a substitute. You do not have to act as an instructor on site, nor do you have to roll up your sleeves and help the subcontractor carry the 8 inch ball vales, gate valves etc from the jetty up to the rig.
I have seen cases where the supervisors of the contractors were not able to fill up a hot work permit forms or to communicate properly with the clients who speak English. So the team leader or the project engineer need to step in to have the jobs done.
Project management means delegating jobs to all those under you who you are sure are able to carry out the jobs successfully. But unfortunately, in many parts of the world, the greedy contractors will tell your boss : Look, Johnny, that project engineer is so free most of the days. Why can't he roll up his sleeves and help us to complete the jobs faster? If that contractor has given some corrupt money to Johnny, definitely Johnny will agree with the greedy contractor.
You materials and equipment must be all ready. Have a full list of who can provide you with a replacement should your equipment break down while the project is on. It will be very expensive to look for replacement of equipment once the project is on, unless you have contacts who are not greedy. Be honest, all materials must be genuine ones. Honesty is still the best policy. Your competitors cannot pull your tail, unless you have one.
No contractors, their representatives, or other visitors should be allowed to loiter around the company premises. Each visitor’s arrival time and departure time must be recorded and each visitor must be accompanied to the exit door by a company representative.
The team leader or project engineer is an authorized representative of the company. He is there to make sure that the job is done in accordance with the contract as agreed between his company and the subcontractor. He is not there to help the subcontractor carry pipes, oxygen and acetylene bottles and so on. Remember, if a subcontractor wants you to do these, ask him to have a written statement duly signed by your company manager.
All personnel working on your project must be from the subcontractor. If you find your workers working on the project which has been contracted by the subcon, tell your manager about it. List all the workers who left your company workshop, in the morning and the time they returned to the workshop of the company you work for. The subcon will have to pay back to your comapny for every worker seconded to him from your workshop. It is common for a subcon to take away more than ten workers from your workshop and do not have to pay one cent at the end of the project because there is no document to prove that your comapny had provided him with employees from your company.
Nothing comes free in this world. If you see greenbacks, stuffed in an envelope, placed on your hotel room table, call the reception people to remove them. If the police check on you and the serial numbers on those backs tally with the list produced by the police, you are in for great trouble.
Do not commit yourself, if you find free one-night stand coming into your room, turn down the offer politely. You don’t know what those crooked people are going to do. If you need a partner, go out and arrange it yourself, it will still be cheaper in the end. Moreover, you will owe nobody anything, and nobody will be able to tell you to do things as they wish.