Delivery excellence and quality assurance are a key aspect for integrated infrastructure delivery company AECOM. This focus is prevalent across its three end markets operating in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, namely buildings and places, civil infrastructure, and construction services.

With a quality team in Africa and the Middle East, AECOM covers the entire region, according to Punnoose Mathew, Quality Assurance Director, MEA Quality & Delivery Excellence. “Members of the quality team are involved in all of our projects, which gives us a strong foundation for delivering consistent and predictable outcomes for our clients region-wide.”

A key focus is organisational learning related to both delivery excellence and quality assurance. “In its simplest form, this can be a newly-formed project team seeking lessons learned from other teams who have worked with the same client and with similar project scopes,” Mathew explains.

Mathew defines ‘delivery excellence’ as the ethos underpinning AECOM’s approach to all its projects, which aims at exceeding customer expectations and requirements. “Clients have preconceived notions when it comes to delivery and quality, and therefore it is important for us to be recognised as a complete solutions provider. The volume and diversity of the projects we undertake ensures we have significant expertise across a range of markets and industries,” Mathew highlights.

Clients are sometimes unaware of the full suite of services that AECOM can offer, with design only constituting a small portion of the total capability. “For example, we can carry out construction supervision to ensure that our designs are built as per the specification, on time, on budget and to high quality standards.”

Another key differentiator for AECOM is its experience in operations and maintenance, which extends its involvement beyond the commissioning stage. “At the end of the day, our delivery excellence ensures a win-win scenario for all stakeholders. We can even reduce the running costs of projects once they have been completed,” Mathew points out.

Given its global base, AECOM is unique among consultancies in that it subscribes to all international engineering standards and regulations, in addition to a full range of quality assurance standards. “Not many consulting engineering companies can make a similar claim. We have access to every standard needed in any area we work.”

Internationally, AECOM has input into various standards and regulatory authorities and bodies. “Our institutional experience underlines our capabilities to our clients and reassures them that we can meet their specific requirements,” Mathew stresses.

AECOM has project management tools whereby all projects can be documented and reviewed monthly, which assists in mitigating any risk for clients. “We can support projects by engaging with the project manager to resolve any issues, and to offer our full support in addressing all client requirements.”

Checks and balances are in place whereby delivery excellence can be quantified and monitored. “We always follow-up upon project completion, as this is important in establishing a long-term relationship with the client. It provides us with valuable information that feeds back into our own expertise,” Mathew adds.

Market conditions remain a major challenge in terms of sustained growth, in addition to managing client expectations. “Our main aim is to understand our clients’ needs upfront, as this prevents unnecessary changes. At the end of the day, we need to guarantee that we deliver projects profitably as well.”

“Our institutional knowledge, experience, and expertise has cemented our ongoing success, while our high rate of technology adoption and innovation has set a benchmark in the industry, and placed us ahead of our competitors,” Mathew concludes. From planning to detailed design, cost consulting, construction management, and operations and maintenance, AECOM’s focus on complete solutions points the way for the future.