Summary
- As a major player in our industry, we experience everyday how the world around us is changing, suppliers becoming global, contractors moving beyond boundaries, and competition getting fierce on our home markets.
- In order to remain competitive, we need to build a new approach from tender to operations on how we source, procure and deliver what we need for achieving successfully increasingly more complex projects.
- A new Procurement Organization will therefore be put in place to reach a more leveraged, more qualitative and more efficient way of buying across the Group. The expected outcome of this new organization is to give access to suppliers at better costs and better lead time to all buyers across the Group, while generating savings on contracts.
- The new Procurement Organization implies the creation of new functions and new appointments at Group level and company level.
- Consultant firm PwC is supporting BESIX in this effort, under the sponsorship of Jan Gesquière, CFO of BESIX Group.
Successful pilot
Synergizing our ways of working is one of the six strategic drivers of BESIX Forward. Procurement is clearly a domain where possible synergies can be found and leveraged with short and long term benefits.
Started in Summer 2018, a pilot across entities has been started to identify scale economies on purchases of some materials: rebar, electrical cables, pipes, sheet & tubular piles, etc. This exercise will now be expanded to new type of spend categories like MEP, facades, finishing interiors, IT, fleet, etc. This first pilot shows clear potential for recurring savings on contracts as from 2019 onwards.
Creation of Category Experts
To continue identifying and realizing this kind of improvements, a network of dedicated procurement experts is now gradually put in place. Called the Category Experts, these experts will support the business thanks to their specific category knowledge and share best practices across the Group. These Category Experts will be present both at regional and at global level.
- At global level, the Global Category Experts will focus on increase procurement specialization in fields like for instance sheet & tubular piles, rebar, steel structures, façades, transportation & logistics, etc. The Global Category Experts will report to the newly created position of Chief Procurement Officer (see below).
- At regional level (i.e. Europe and Middle East), the Regional Category Experts will focus on increase procurement specialization in fields like for instance MEP, finishing interiors, indirect goods & services (IT, fleet, facility management), etc. The Regional Category Experts will report to the newly created position of Regional Procurement Manager (see below).
- See simplified organization chart in appendix for clarity.
Appointments
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Stéphane Bres as Chief Procurement Officer, who will start as from 11 June. Trained as a Master of Engineering at the ENSAM (Arts et Métiers ParisTech), Stéphane has held various positions in the sourcing and procurement domains through his career, notably at Alstom and GE prior to joining BESIX. He brings on board both procurement expertise and a strong experience in lean and efficient buying. He will report to Jan Gesquière, CFO and Pierre Sironval, COO.
We are pleased to announce also the appointment of François Lhomme as Regional Procurement Manager for the Middle East. A Civil Engineer by trade, François has held various positions at Six Construct, among which Head of Tendering and Commercial Director for the Atlantis project. He will report to Stéphane Bres.
The position of Regional Procurement Manager for Europe is not filled yet and will be soon open for applications to internal candidates.
Pascal Beeckmans, until now Procurement & Logistics Director at BESIX, is appointed Director of the Procurement Center of Excellence. As such, he will be responsible for indirect purchases (a.o. logistics), analysis for best country sourcing, processes and systems management and purchase forecasting. He will report to Stéphane Bres.
Co-creation & Internal Mobility
The launch of this new Procurement Organization is a key priority to the Group, as it will help to deliver significant contribution to our business results. A true co-creation mind-set is key to make a success out of this organization; hence, we would like to thank everyone for the constant support and valuable co-creation.
Are you interested to become part of the new Procurement Organization? We are looking for enthusiastic colleagues to join the team and deliver added value across multiple projects and entities. Please reach out to your HR department or go directly to our internal mobility platform https://my.besixgroup.com/en-us/Pages/hrtransfers.aspx to learn more about the exciting roles. These functions are open to all employees of the BESIX Group.
