Amine Focuses on Partnerships

By Paul Scott Abbott

Facing a combination of challenges previously unseen in his nearly quarter-century global “learning journey” with Bechtel, Tarek Amine is rethinking the supply chain approach of the venerable engineering, construction and project management firm, placing a renewed emphasis on productive partnerships.

As Reston, Virginia-headquartered Bechtel’s principal vice president and chief supply chain officer, Amine is at the fore of laying the groundwork for the next 125 years of the longtime leading EPC company while maintaining commitment to such key corporate values as safety and environmental stewardship.

“For the last few years, we’re definitely going through an unprecedented large volume of dynamic changes impacting the supply chain,” Amine told Breakbulk from a jobsite in Saudi Arabia. “In our industry, over the many years, we have established a predictable supply chain with a global reach, and we’re now seeing that being shaken to the extent we are actually rethinking what we had taken for granted for many years.”


Revisiting Approaches

As Bechtel comes up on its celebration in 2023 of the 125-year anniversary of the firm’s founding in San Francisco, time-honored methodologies are being revisited, according to Amine, who has been engaged for more than 23 years with Bechtel projects throughout the world.

“We have to look at and examine our tried-and-true approaches,” Amine said. “There’s a huge shift from a global supply chain to regional and local supply chains. The global supply chain – where value, predictability and reliability were the bedrock – has really been shaken now, and it’s really more like values and transparency are driving where we source material. That has compelled us to re-evaluate how strong the supply chain is.”

Amine cited such present factors as inflation, Covid-19, logistical and labor market challenges, and sanctions and tariffs. Also, beyond market dynamics, are mounting sustainability requirements, including for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, leading to advances in such realms as electric vehicles and solar, renewable and carbon transition initiatives.

“The amount of change has really impacted the strong, reliable supply chain that we knew and relied upon,” Amine said. “I jokingly say the supply chain before had been boring and very predictable, with nothing exciting about it. You didn’t hear a lot of people talk about it. But now, everybody knows what the supply chain is about. People are realizing that the supply chain – which is made out of many people doing many things and trying to connect complex transactions – used to be in the backroom, and now it’s in the front room. It’s in front of everybody’s eyes.”

With increasingly regionalized and localized – and evermore transparent – supply chains, it has become more crucial than ever for Bechtel to enhance collaborations with customers and the full spectrum of providers.

“We’re having to examine how we get confident our materials and equipment will be at the right location when needed, with all of the changes and every factor impacting the supply chain, whether it is the price of the commodity or the logistics constraints or the availability of truck drivers or the port’s wait time or the tariffs or sanctions,” Amine said. “So, we have to navigate all of these factors that rarely in the past have moved at the same time. Usually, we’ve seen one or two, but not all of them, changing.

“Our approach,” he said, “has to be to get a lot closer to them [supply chain partners], to reinforce partnership-type relationships, understanding that constraints are universal and what the market sees and what we’re seeing is truly impacting everybody.

“We have to learn more, understand more and try to identify the vulnerabilities within the supply chain and where the risk lies – whether it is geographical or material-based or logistical-based – and truly partner with them to work through the challenges that we see and find resolutions in real time.”


Seizing ‘The Golden Key’

Recently, Amine said, the phrase “the golden key” has emerged, referring to how a single component can hold up shipment of a finished good – “and that component could be the least-cost one, but it becomes golden because it’s not there.

“For us, the key is really about our ability to support our customers and projects,” he said. “And we focus on that and try to partner with our customers for a solution while having open, transparent interactions about the issues we’re seeing so we can get to resolutions and decisions quickly.

“The key to our success is truly an integrated partnership and working relationship and coordination between our customer, ourselves and our supply base, whether it be our subcontractor, transportation provider or a supplier,” Amine continued. “We rely on them tremendously for our success and our delivery, and we consider them a partner in working with them in finding resolutions.

“We rely heavily on our suppliers and subcontractors,” he said, “from design through fabrication in supporting our construction schedule and sequencing that we need. That relationship is key for our success.”

At the same time, Amine looks to advance Bechtel’s longstanding commitment to better the communities in which it is engaged.

“Our goal is to create value for the local community,” he said. “We participate and partner with the communities where we live and work.

“Of course, we continually focus on the diversification of our supplier base and provide ample opportunities for diverse companies to work with us,” he added. “So we engage on every level, and we think it is very important that we create the most cooperative relationship to address and resolve the issues rather than trying to prevent them.”

Indeed, when asked about the most gratifying project experience he has had in his 23-plus years with Bechtel, Amine, who has worked on ventures in seven countries across four continents, responded, “it’s tough to pick one. Each one of those holds a special meaning.”

But then he homed in on the trio of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, megaprojects on Curtis Island, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, that kept him down under from 2010 through 2016. The endeavors deployed creative procurement models and entailed daily boat, barge and ferry transits between the island and a small mainland harbor. Impacts included US$350 million in subcontract awards to 40-plus local businesses and more than US$1.5 billion in wages to local residents, including more than 500 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

“We created a new ecosystem of how we execute a project through collaboration and leveraging and centralization of many of the activities,” he said. “That model of execution is still a model that is a differentiator in terms of how we look at projects.”


‘Exciting Time’ Beckoning

Amid the myriad present challenges, business remains strong for Bechtel, according to Amine, who said the company is active across all business units, with a host of projects and prospects around the globe at different levels of maturity, including in construction, design, study and evaluation stages.

“From a general activity forecast for all global projects, we see tremendous activities across all the world,” Amine said. “It’s kind of hard for me to pinpoint exactly, but I can tell you we feel we are in a very active mode where we see high business activities across all of our business units.”

Bechtel’s business units encompass energy, infrastructure, manufacturing and technology, mining and metals, and nuclear, security and environmental markets.

“It’s definitely an exciting time, with the emergence of new markets and new sectors,” Amine said. “I think we’re seeing a renewed solar and renewable energy focus, energy transition and emerging manufacturing and technology. I think there’s different excitement about different sectors in the current times, as well as the traditional ones, which are infrastructure and government. It’s definitely a lot more than two or three years ago.”

Among areas with highest levels of present Bechtel activity is the LNG industry along the U.S. Gulf Coast, but Amine was quick to say current company engagement is “pretty much across all our business units.”

That said, Bechtel continues to be discerning in choosing what work to assume.

“For Bechtel, as a privately held firm, we’ve always been selective in the type of projects we are taking in, and we always focus on taking projects that match our values and covenants and what brings value to our customers and to our name,” Amine said.

“So, while performance, cost and schedule are important, they have never been the only driver for us,” he said. “I think working on transformational projects – bringing value to and connecting communities – is consistent with Bechtel’s critical beliefs.

“Safety is not a priority; it’s a value,” Amine said. “It’s a belief that we want to ensure every person goes home safely at the end of the day. Plus being good stewards of the environment is a high value.”

Amine pointed to Bechtel’s net zero target, working with customers and partners across the supply chain to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

“And we definitely have a lot of focus on our diversity and inclusion, making sure we continue to grow our talent,” he said. “Having a diversity of thought on better ways to build our project is a differentiator.”

 
Benefiting From Mentoring

This effort to maximize diversity extends from the internal business resource groups like Women@Bechtel to mentoring partnerships with several universities, plus the Bechtel Global Centers of Excellence assimilate exceptional subject matter experts in providing unique solutions. Amine is personally active in mentoring programs including those of the Women’s Energy Network-Houston and American University of Beirut, one of his alma maters in addition to the University of Houston.

“We believe investing time to develop the next generation is truly investing in success and building our company for the long term,” Amine said. “We are coming up to 125 years as a company. We plan for the next 125 years, so mentoring and growing the talent is paramount for us.

“We mentor, but we learn at the same time. We get exposed to the new thought process and the new excitement and energy, so I think it’s absolutely vital for us on a company level, and I think it’s enriching on a personal level to the mentor as well as the mentee.

“The supply chain is not just about our supply base,” Amine said. “Supply chains really start with talent, with people who can act and operate and behave strategically and provide solutions for our projects. We spend a lot of time on talent development and bringing in new capabilities. I want to emphasize the importance of the people in our supply chain. We spend a lot of time seeking innovation, seeking relationship builders, and we really focus on trying for our supply chain to be a differentiator.”

Asked if he ever tires of multiyear deployments managing projects throughout the world, Amine replied: “Not really. I look at my work as really a learning journey. I get huge excitement from the work we do, the people who do the work we do and their excitement and the communities in which we work.

“So,” he continued, “I honestly look forward to going to our projects, to travel and feel the excitement of what we do on a daily basis. I feel I’m privileged that I can do that, and I don’t look at that as work.

“It’s exciting what we do and the size and magnitude with which we do it and the value and the care that Bechtel has where we work and how we deliver our work and what we leave behind,” Amine said. “We care a lot about what we deliver.” 


A professional journalist for more than 50 years, U.S.-based Paul Scott Abbott has focused on transportation topics since the late 1980s.

Image credit: Bechtel