CAKE: Deputy CEO, Hassan Al-Rashid, and Carbon Manager, Andrew Robins, cut the cake celebrating Qatalum's first annivarsary on July 24. (Photo: Mohamed Yaasar)
By the end of June, construction of Qatalum was 26 percent completed. The site preparations are now fully completed, while civil works continue with approximately 10,000 workers on site, 5,000 of whom are staying at the construction village.
Global procurement
In addition, a great deal of manufacturing work is taking place outside Qatar: in Australia, China, Korea, United States, in several countries in Europe and around the Arabian Gulf.
"Much of this equipment will be shipped to Qatar for installation starting late 2008, and we've already received hundreds of containers through Doha port," says Gautesen, adding that the company will take delivery of more than 3,000 off-size units requiring special transport, also after arrival in Qatar, due either to weight and/or physical size.
Organizational development
During the past year many organizational developments have taken place in Qatalum, and from now on, most of the Qatalum project and line organization will be located in Qatar. The last module of the Qatalum Management Team Introduction Program took place in June, and the deliverables are summarized in eight building blocks:
The Qatalum Way – a management system governing the way Qatalum should be developed and brought forward
- Mission, values and strategy
- Governing documents
- Organizational design
- Qatalum Production System
- Value Based Management and KPI systems
- Health, safety and environment principles
- Maintenance philosophy
- "These eight building blocks will be further developed, and implemented into the organization through what we call the Operation Preparedness Plan," says Gautesen.
Aluminium experts
Up until now, between 80 and 90 people have been recruited to the Qatalum organization. A significant number of these come from positions in Hydro, as Qatalum has mainly recruited aluminium specialists.
When fully operational by the summer of 2010, Qatalum will have about 1,100 employees. The challenging task of finding the right job candidates has started, and the Human Resources Department at Qatalum, together with line management, have now made their first recruitment tour of several countries in Asia, including Indonesia, The Philippines and India.
"The number of employees in the organization will grow rapidly from Q3 this year. Therefore there will be much focus on recruitment and training in the time ahead," says Gautesen, adding that there is comprehensive work ongoing to develop a new set of Standard Operation Procedures as the main basis for operator training.
On time and on budget
Looking back on the first year, Gautesen says the still very young company has achieved a lot. "We are well underway to starting up the largest greenfield project ever in the aluminium industry, on time and on budget. This is something to be proud of," says Gautesen.
