Soutenance mémoire
Role of Engineering Services
By creating value or reducing costs through various means (design, development, machinery, materials, instruments, structures, processes and systems), engineering services owe their client loyalty, integrity and diligence. As drivers of innovation, social and economic development, engineers must also act as faithful agents or trustees of their clients or employers towards communities and their environment (Meng, 2015; United Nations Educational, 2012). Indeed, as the world’s most populous professional corporation, engineers have the greatest footprint on nature, whether in infrastructure and construction, oil and mining, water and energy, product manufacturing, transportation or chemical ingredients (Murphy et al., 2015). They act as fiduciaries and bear a fiduciary duty of care to avoid conflicts of interest and serve the best interest of the public and its environment (SASB, 2016) (Figure 3.1). The fiduciary relationship of consulting engineers and architects originates from the agency theory where a principal seeks the advice of an agent who is given discretionary power to fulfill a specific mandate.
Such power is explained by the obligation of means of the agent who must demonstrate skills, know-how and resources in order to make his advice credible and worthwhile. This is why consultants, such as engineer designers, are true fiduciaries (or trustees) (Castro, 2009; Hoke, 2014)) whose liabilities may, however, be mitigated under contractual arrangements (Associates, 2011). They have no obligation of results both in terms of specifications and budget (fee-for-service model) (Eisenhardt, 1989; Jensen et Meckling, 1976; Lozano, Carpenter et Huisingh, 2015; Ross, 1973; Zeckhauser et Pratt, 1985), although they may limit voluntarily their managerial discretion to avoid fiduciary liabilities (Gurney, Curtis et Murphy, 2014). They also enjoy extensive discretion in dealing with communities and their environment, even though they must abide by basic laws and rules. CEC discipline evolved over time, abandoning the old production, activity centred and critical path method (CPM) approach in favour of leaner operating systems, relational contracts and more collaborative working flows to reduce costs and waste. As a result, unintended consequences emerged with the potential of higher operational risks. “It is little wonder, then, that a planning system designed to produce predictable workflow and rapid learning ‘crashes’ frequently when installed in traditionally managed construction organizations” (Howell, Ballard et Tommelein, 2010).
A most critical point is to underestimation small operational risks that are less visible (hidden risk) in terms of execution or procurement. Ford Motors discovered, for example, that the suppliers it focus most on, due to the size of outsourcing contract and value of their components, were actually less threatening in terms of production line breakdown or stoppage than far cheaper suppliers of more basic commodities (Simchi-Levi, Schmidt et Wei, 2014). The US management and financial FMI Corp., specialized in the construction industry, feels the same way by attributing excessive focus on the outside world and a lack of discipline one of the five reasons why strategic execution fails and why contractors fail (FMI, 2016). Less obvious practices and more routine-like operational risks are more systemic than the typical noisy type of scandal or fraud appearing higher up on the radar. For instance, occupational health and safety hazards (OHS) performance represents one of the most critical success factors in CEC (Alzahrani et Emsley, 2013; Construction, 2011). Yet, “94% of critical safety incidents in construction can be attributed to originating influences prior to the construction phase” (Deloitte, 2014). In one case of a large CEC corporation, risk analysis was conducted in less than 5% of its ongoing projects prior to construction start.
Although most scientists and practitioners feel that small risks are treated out of proportion to their importance (Aven, 2015), they actually tend to be underestimated for their contaminating effects. At the heart of its day-to-day tasks and function (as advisers, feasibility consultants, planners and designers, technical or installation service providers, inspectors, contract supervisors and evaluators), risk management has become a major threat for CEC top executives, with two thirds of them believing that their company faced more threats in 2015 than three years earlier (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2016). Disputes and litigation costs are thus on the rise, with 44% of companies facing regulatory proceedings against them (Fulbright, 2014), with even greater concern in Australia and Canada (2 to 3 times higher than world average (Fulbright, 2015)). The minimal metric to track operational risk in the CEC considers environmental impact, structural integrity and safety, health and safety, climatic impact, life cycle impacts and business ethics (SASB, 2016) (Figure 3.2). Technology innovation contributed to improving project management (ex: BIM, virtual reality) and to some extent, occupational safety and hazards (ex: wearable tracking safety information on site, mobile decision aid support). It has yet to reach compliance practice in terms of overall operational risk assessment as well as monitoring, decision-making process, Big Data, and intranet information flows (rather than strict content), etc.; s if the soil was still too humid and meaningful performance data were missing. Many companies had to restructure their organization or even reposition their whole corporate branding as a result of severe sanctions. Parallel to the introduction of new conduct framework and supervision such as anti-corruption legislation and inspection units, adopted in both advanced and developing nations, and various codes and certifications (FIDIC Pink book, OECD integrity codes and ISO 31000, ISO 37001) to mitigate corruption, two other major constraining sources have combined together to change the corporate behaviour of major organizations:
Occupational health and safety hazards (OHS), the industry’s vulnerability, with close to 100 000 fatalities (ILO, 2015; Zhou, Goh et Li, 2015) per year around the world, is falling under increasing scrutiny both by public authorities and private industrial owners. Such bolt tightening, illustrated by the new standard of ISO 45001 and spreading across the world (Gangolells et al., 2010; Kim, Park et Park, 2016; Zhou, Goh et Li, 2015), is also affecting directly pre-qualification tender criteria that engineers and contractors must attain to win business. Indeed, as OHS ranks amongst the highest critical factors for a construction project (Alzahrani et Emsley, 2013; Puri et Tiwari, 2014). Multilateral environmental accords, such as the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and several recent legislation pieces and regulations (the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act of 2012, US update of the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016 (Bearden, 2013)) had a double and deep effect on compliance practices. While new and stiffer enforcement rules impose increasing costs on both risk control and operations, wide new business opportunities have emerged for environmental engineers involved in infrastructure construction.
The combination of regulatory and commercial pressures in a rather low economic cycle of public expenditure triggered a major consolidation wave worldwide with little organic gains overall (Bleßmann et Savelberg, 2012; Choi et Russell, 2004; Lu et al., 2014; PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2014), with some 2000 companies changing hands since 2010 (Mullen, 2016) for well over $400 billion. Of the total, civil engineering “leads the pack” and 40% of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) were powered by private equity institutional investors instead of more obvious strategic partners from the industry. This growing financialization of engineering explains why reputational risk (Di Guardo, Marrocu et Paci, 2016) has gradually overtaken most other corporate hazards on the eve of the large infrastructure refurbishing. The old model of pure consulting play for architects and consulting engineers, where the accountability of engineers could be well distinguished against that of contractors, faded with the increased integration of consulting and contracting activities, fewer niche players and more sector diversity to reduce market risk (Ye et al., 2017), creating more confusion on the market between the trusteeship and stewardship of large international groups.
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Table des matières
INTRODUCTION
CHAPITRE 1 REVUE DE LA LITTÉRATURE
1.1 Les intégrateurs
1.1.1 Le rôle des intégrateurs
1.2 L’environnement d’affaires
1.2.1 La fraude
1.2.2 Les paiements de facilitation
1.2.3 La corruption
1.3 Le contrôle des risques
1.3.1 Le code d’éthique
1.3.2 La conformité
1.4 Les risques pour les organisations de génie-conseil et de construction
1.4.1 Le risque opérationnel
CHAPITRE 2 MÉTHODOLOGIE DE RECHERCHE
2.1 Élaboration d’un questionnaire
2.2 Identification de firmes d’ingénierie et de construction
2.3 Réalisation des entrevues
2.4 Évaluation des données obtenues
CHAPITRE 3 THE CHALLENGES OF COMPLIANCE AND BEST STRATEGY EXECUTION TO ENSURE QUALITY AND INTEGRITY IN ENGINEERING SERVICES
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 Role of Engineering Services
3.1.2 Enforcing compliance and mitigating operational risk
3.2 Methodology and sampling
3.3 Results
3.3.1 Business model analysis
3.3.2 Compliance Practice Findings
Large size firms
Medium size firms
Small size firms
3.4 Trends, best practices and innovation in quality in engineering services
3.5 Discussion
3.6 Conclusion
CHAPITRE 4 ANALYSE DES RÉSULTATS ET DISCUSSION
4.1 Firmes de petite taille
4.1.1 Clarification du modèle d’affaires
4.1.2 État des lieux
4.1.3 Origine et fonctionnement du programme
4.2 Firmes de moyenne taille
4.2.1 Clarification du modèle d’affaires
4.2.2 État des lieux
4.2.3 Origine et fonctionnement du programme
4.3 Firmes de grande taille
4.3.1 Clarification du modèle d’affaires
4.3.2 État des lieux
4.3.3 Origine et fonctionnement du programme
4.4 Facteur de la taille
CONCLUSION
RECOMMANDATIONS
ANNEXE I QUESTIONNAIRE – VERSION FRANÇAISE
ANNEXE II QUESTIONNAIRE – VERSION ANGLAISE
ANNEXE III LETTRE DE PRÉSENTATION
ANNEXE IV LETTRE D’ENGAGEMENT DE CONFIDENTIALITÉ
ANNEXE V GRILLE DE MATURITÉ DE SNC-LAVALIN
LISTE DE RÉFÉRENCES BIBLIOGRAPHIQUES
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