The Ministry of Works outlines benefits of strategy management in creating Bahrain's infrastructure

A press conference was held today explaining the significance of the highly acclaimed excellence award recently bestowed upon the Ministry for executing its strategy and how this resonates throughout the Kingdom.

The award was conferred on 3 June by Palladium Group, the global leader in helping organizations execute their strategies by making better decisions. It is a prized accolade and recipients are inducted into Palladium Group's Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame.

"The fact that the Ministry of Works is one of only four recipients of this year's award from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa is a significant endorsement of the success of one of our core competencies. More importantly the award confirms our performance and abilities and the soundness of our approach to strategy management,"

said H.E. Fahmi Bin Ali Al Jowder, Minister of Works.

"Strategy is our roadmap: it is the discipline which guides the way we work so that we are able to efficiently and effectively provide public works services and contribute towards achieving sustainable economic and social development in the Kingdom. Our use of strategy is also integral to achieving the goals we have set for ourselves and they link into the aspirations of the Bahrain Economic Vision 2030 and national development strategies," he added.

Strategy Management allows the Ministry to optimize its capabilities to fulfill its objectives to deliver a world-class road network, to provide sanitary services as well as excellent business services.

In doing so it is able to fully contribute to the Kingdom's development on economic and other fronts. Positive and impactful benefits for all in Bahrain are made possible by creating an environment - through the Ministry's responsibility for the Kingdom's infrastructure and capital asset formation - that attracts opportunities for continuing investment and development.

As a 'Strategy Focused'(* 1) and collaborative organization the Ministry has a planned strategy in place that is flexible yet robust, has clearly defined goals, operates in transparency and promotes knowledge sharing.

Commitment, employee awareness, and good governance to link strategy to operations has enabled the Ministry - in only one year - to increase 'on-budget' projects from 23% to 86% and in four years it has increased the value of its projects 10-fold using almost the same number of staff.

The benefits for Bahrain are that as a Balanced Score Card Hall of Fame inductee the Ministry is recognized as being a world-class organization and this signifies to public and commercial organizations that the Ministry possesses the highest quality of management and staff. It is also a powerful testament of the strength of strategic management practices within the Ministry and ultimately to the ability to deliver projects impacting all in the Kingdom.

The Ministry of Works is also better enabled to deliver upon its mission to the people of Bahrain using the best management techniques available and these have also facilitated and created other benefits, including:

• A large growth in private sector interest to support accelerated and expanded infrastructure development as well as a growth in services being outsourced to the private sector;
• A linkage of all programmes and budgets to the Ministry's strategy and the achievement of greater budget utilization and improved project management practices as well as professional certified staff;
• The development of sector strategies; improvement in national coordination and frameworks for public-private-partnerships readied for implementation; and
• An increased training budget, greater staff quality and performance and reduced turnover, increased staff satisfaction and an improved organizational culture.

"Our achievements demonstrate successes in strategy development and implementation and further encourages us in our quest to achieve our vision of being a leading professional organization providing quality services to the people of Bahrain," concluded H.E. Al Jowder.