The General Secretariat of the Tender Board organized its annual meeting under the patronage of His Excellency Dr. Saeed bin Mohammed Al-Saqri, Minister of Economy and a number of Their Excellencies, CEOs and General Managers from government agencies. This meeting comes to celebrate the secretariat’s achievements in 2023 and review the priorities for the year 2024. The ceremony included the launch of competency initiatives. Functionality and quality policy, and ended by honoring the cooperating parties.
His Excellency the Secretary General, Engineer Badr Al-Maamari, said about this meeting: “The General Secretariat of the Tender Board is working to achieve its national goals to raise the efficiency of spending with all its capabilities, projects and initiatives. This meeting comes to confirm its activities and achievements in the field to raise competencies and enhance skills.”
Abdullah Al Hosani, Talent and Competency Development Advisor at the Secretariat, also stated about the programs that were launched at the meeting:
"The meeting included the launch and follow-up of a number of programs that seek to empower national competencies, including the launch of the Emkan program to develop cadres for government projects and contracts. This program seeks to create a database and functional competency matrix in all departments of government institutions in the field of projects, contracts and tenders."
(Emkan) is a promising program for exemplary professional development for cadres working in contracts, project management, and tenders in government agencies, in order to reach specialized national competencies that compete locally and internationally. It comes in 3 basic stages. In the first stage, it targets construction projects, from which 7 representative government agencies benefit. There are 50 engineers. The second stage is the project management stage (services and supplies), targeting 100 engineers from 11 government agencies, and the final stage is the technical project management stage.
The ceremony included the launch of the 360 Leadership Path project, a program that seeks to enhance the efficiency of occupants of supervisory positions with exemplary administrative leadership skills, which was prepared for the Secretariat’s employees for a period of 6 months using a blended learning system. The program includes leadership skills and strategic planning skills. This ensures the building and empowerment of highly qualified people to fill leadership and supervisory positions.
The meeting also touched on the follow-up of the National Job Competencies Matrix project, which seeks to create an administrative system to measure the employee’s skills and abilities to obtain a standard model that helps in developing a specialized and appropriate development plan to develop and enhance each skill. The program worked to classify employees from newly hired to highly experienced. Developing basic skills development plans to ensure proper spending on development and training programmes.
What confirms the keenness of the General Secretariat of the Tender Board to improve the efficiency of operations and increase beneficiary satisfaction by improving the quality of services provided was the launch of the Quality Policy Implementation Project. The quality policy is defined as a number of requirements and guidelines that determine how to organize and manage the secretariat’s operations and procedures. To achieve continuous quality and meet the expectations of internal and external beneficiaries, this system focuses on several aspects, including: customer focus, risk management, continuous improvement, and leadership responsibility.
Dr. Khadija bint Saud Al Balushi, a quality specialist at the General Secretariat of the Tender Board, said regarding the implementation of the quality policy: “The Secretariat is making clear efforts to raise the efficiency of transactions and services. This project aims to adopt a recognized global management system that leads to obtaining a certificate of compliance with the international standard ISO.” 9001, as well as achieving material and economic gains through reducing costs, successful planning of projects, reducing transaction completion times, rationalizing consumption, and establishing follow-up, monitoring and measurement mechanisms.”
The meeting touched on the secretariat’s efforts to build a work culture, represented by many initiatives and programs that aim to establish an institutional culture that is inspiring and supportive of achieving plans and strategies. Khairallah bin Marzouq Al-Jarrah, head of the work culture team at the General Secretariat of the Tender Board, stated:
“One of the most prominent work culture initiatives is the “Athar” initiative, which aims to highlight the impact on employees and encourage them to achieve high performance by measuring and estimating the positive impact achieved on the level of individual or group performance through analyzing tasks, job roles, and processes that determine each impact expected from employees. The General Secretariat is also working on a number of initiatives that aim to achieve functional well-being by focusing on aspects of physical health, mental health, appreciation, and achieving balance between life and work.
These initiatives are expected to contribute to stimulating innovation and progress and to enhancing work culture by raising institutional affiliation, increasing communication and positive interaction between employees, and creating distinguished ambassadors for the General Secretariat of the Tender Board.
The ceremony concluded by honoring a number of cooperating parties and partners for the success of the General Secretariat of the Tender Board in the year 2023, and strengthening the partnership relations that bring success and clear growth in order to achieve the advancement of this country.