INFRASTRUCTURE
CORPORATE
COVER
mere wish that cannot be achieved unless necessary actions are taken to bridge the infrastructure gap. Managing Director, African Finance Corporation (AFC), said Andrew Alli, who spoke on 'Achieving Sustainable Development through Infrastructure The Role of the AFC.', argued that for a sustainable infrastructure development to happen, policy instability, poor legal and political framework, lack of a holistic view of national planning, lack of coordination between government agencies as well as limited capacity of civil servants must be addressed. He stressed that stakeholders must tackle infrastr ucture challenges creatively, target private sector funding and integrate training and job creation components into projects from conception, adding government must also ensure a favourable environment that would ease cost of doing business. He attributed project failure in Nigeria to overestimate revenue and growth potential, insufficient attention to mitigating and controlling risk at the design phase, lack of confidence between the project stakeholders, ability to monitor project development and predict emerging risks and poor planning of asset operation. Importance of Infrastructure Robust infrastructure could put millions of Nigerians to work in decent paying jobs. Electricity is crucial to fuel the economic growth of a country; a road improves productivity; Schools increase education levels and productivity. And so on. These all have important medium- and long-run implications for an economy. A key benefit of infrastructure, especially transport infrastructure, is the reduction of transport costs, which helps to create new markets, fuels further agglomeration, which in turn fosters competition, spurs innovation, lowers prices and raises productivity, leading to an increase in living standards. Group Executive Vice Chairman, SIFAX Group, Dr. Taiwo Afolabi, cautioned recently that the lack of critical infrastructure could hinder the 18 | www.cedmagazineng.com August 2017
success of the federal government's drive to improving the ease of doing business in the country and urged that the problem of infrastructure deficit should be urgently addressed in order to compliment the executive orders signed recently by the acting President. To spur economic growth and development, the federal government has taken the bull by the horn and has taken steps to bridge the infrastructure deficit. At the third Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) & Bloomberg Chief Executive Officer Roundtable in Lagos recently, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun had said the federal government was commitment to infrastructure development and economic diversifying. She said about N200billion was invested on roads in 2016. Adeosun said the N200 billion, which was an increased on the N90 billion Robust infrastructure could put millions of Nigerians to work in decent paying jobs. Electricity is crucial to fuel the economic growth of a country; a road improves productivity; Schools increase education levels and productivity. And so on.
spent in 2015, is out of the N1.2 trillion earmarked for capital projects to ensure ease of doing business. According to the minister, the government will continue to prioritise infrastructure development to unlock growth potential, pointing out that the diversification of the economy would not be achieved without a good transportation system and power supply to improve ease of doing business. The minister said the country was very vast and to actualise her potential, infrastructure development was very crucial for sustainable growth and development. A 'Big Plan' for Infrastructure To this end, Adeosun said last week that her ministry was set to release N350billion, being the first tranche for the capital votes included in the 2017 Appropriation Act. The finance minister, who spoke at the public presentation of the 2017 Appropriation Act, emphatically stated that the government had enough cash available to commence the execution of key projects and initiatives scheduled for the 2017 fiscal year. "We are ready, we are having a cashplan meeting very soon and after that,
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In the world of business as an entrepreneur, you must understand the technicalities involved in running a business, you must be well updated in what is called SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, and what has brought Windfall Engineering Projects Limited thus far in business is our passion for performance. Passion is an underlying word that has no substitute in business growth; it is a key driver in business. Human beings are very creative and also at the same time can be inactive and passive, so as a leader in business, you should be able to turn on that spirit of creativity in your workforce. We are operating a project which is a week old presently, and all the technicalities in drawing a piping project is displayed at the site, though, is a sub-contract job, but were brought in to deliver the project in reck of time. The project cuts across both shutdown and not shutdown window, and which at the production platform, there comes a time of technical term 'hookup', where we bring in our installations and tie-in to the existing structure or facilities, and at that time you may obstruct production, so for safety reason, we need to shutdown to avoid hazard of fire and all that. This is one of our recent accomplishments in project delivery. And very quickly, we have done very critical projects with some big names in the industry, we have worked with DBN and other big names in the same platform side by side. There is no better way to quantify the quality of work you delivered than you have delivered an offshore project during a shutdown time frame, and at that time the nation is losing money, the IOC's losing money for, of course, no production, it is legitimate that they have to do shutdown which is a normal
maintenance culture. After all these, you have to start work as scheduled, your ability to deliver the project by making all arrangements like corporate arrangement, you need to stress all the resources on ground, that there is no failure. We have delivered a lot of projects for Total E&P Nig Limited at shutdown time frame, basically, Total has been our mainstay, which I must emphasize, we appreciate that relationship, which is growing by the day. Most times, we look for an occasion where we sit side by side with our clients.
First of all, I will start by saying fundamentally, clients are business minded, they will not just sit down for a table talk, most meetings are driven by projects, yes, you are a registered vendor, you just can't walk into a client office just to have a tip tap, it must be tangible thing for you and client to have a conversation, either virtually, either through email or physically. T here has been so many opportunities but projects has been mainly the focus in most meetings with our clients.
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