Execution Is Becoming a Competitive Advantage Again
From Commercial and Projects to Execution Reality
Eight years ago, when I arrived in the Middle East within the Suez organization, my background was primarily commercial. I had spent more than fifteen years in business development and commercial leadership roles, mainly around large industrial and infrastructure projects. Before moving to the region, I had also managed a P&L for about one year within a highly project-oriented oil & gas engineering environment.
But despite that exposure to projects and engineering organizations, I had never truly lived the operational reality of execution and long-term services.
At that time, the regional organization had recently integrated the former General Electric Water activities. The team in Middle East was relatively small and historically product-oriented. Most of the local organization focused on sales. Engineering capabilities were largely based in India, while larger projects executed in the region usually came from North America. The few service projects we had locally had mostly been executed through European teams.
Locally, we had a small service center in Dubai, but we were not truly an execution organization.
And that reality became visible very quickly.
We Wanted to Build a Real Service Business
From the beginning, we believed there was significant potential to develop the service business in the region, particularly around temporary seawater desalination plants.
The market was growing fast.
Initially, we were mainly supplying containerized desalination units. But clients, especially in oil & gas and petrochemical industries, were not looking for equipment suppliers anymore.
They wanted complete turnkey solutions.
They did not want to manage:
piping interconnections
electrical cabling
civil works
commissioning
operations
maintenance
staffing
logistics
health & safety
That was supposed to be our responsibility.
Very quickly, we started losing opportunities because our approach remained too product-focused while the market was asking for complete operational accountability.
We Underestimated the Transformation Required
At the beginning, we underestimated the scale of the transformation required.
The challenge was not simply delivering equipment.
Step by step, we progressively realized that the real complexity was much broader:
first understanding what the client truly needed
then defining the right technical solution
then delivering the equipment
then constructing the plant
and finally operating the facility safely and reliably
Even understanding the client’s expectations was sometimes difficult.
In traditional industrial projects, clients usually provide highly detailed specifications because they already know exactly how they intend to operate the plant afterward.
But in temporary service activities, the discussion was completely different.
Clients would simply say:
“I need two or three million liters per day.”
And then it became our responsibility to design, build, organize, and operate the entire solution.
That changed everything.
Engineering Was Far More Complex Than We Initially Thought
One of the biggest lessons was realizing how much we had underestimated engineering itself.
At the beginning, we approached some projects far too simplistically. We almost expected project managers to solve everything alone:
piping layouts
cable routing
interfaces
site integration
equipment positioning
construction coordination
Reality was far more demanding.
Engineering was not only about making systems work technically. It also required understanding how the plant would actually be operated afterward.
And that was a completely different mindset.
For example, over time and through multiple difficult projects, we progressively understood that even the orientation and positioning of containers had major operational consequences:
accessibility
maintenance
operator circulation
safety
cable routing
piping flexibility
ergonomics
At the beginning, many of these dimensions were underestimated because the teams preparing the offers did not yet fully understand operational realities.
We learned through execution itself.
And often through mistakes.
The Complexity of Project Execution
The construction and execution phase itself also became a major learning process.
Procurement, transportation, customs clearance, site logistics, installation supervision, quality control, spare parts management, commissioning, subcontractor coordination — all these dimensions progressively became part of our daily reality.
What looked relatively simple from a distance turned out to require the same rigor as large industrial turnkey projects.
We had initially subcontracted many activities because we simply did not have the internal capabilities.
But execution became difficult and sometimes chaotic. Coordination between all parties was far more complex than expected, and we progressively understood that execution capability itself could not simply be outsourced entirely.
At the beginning, we also underestimated something extremely important: defining the right organization and the right profiles for each phase of the project.
One of the biggest lessons for me personally was realizing that job descriptions are not administrative documents.
They are operational tools.
When you properly define a role, you force yourself to think clearly about:
what the project really requires
what competencies are needed
what level of autonomy is expected
what operational exposure exists
what experience is truly necessary
And very often, we initially underestimated these requirements.
In some cases, we unintentionally put people in situations where they were simply not prepared for the level of complexity they were facing.
Not because they were not good people.
But because we ourselves did not yet fully understand the operational reality of what we were building.
Operations and Health & Safety Changed Everything
The biggest shift came when we moved from building temporary facilities to actually operating them over long periods of time.
That completely changed the nature of the business.
Within Suez globally, operations were obviously a core competency. But within our own regional activity and organization, operating plants was not part of our historical culture.
We came from a product business.
Suddenly, we were responsible for operating industrial facilities ourselves.
And we quickly realized that operating a desalination plant safely and reliably was a completely different profession.
At one point, we even believed that technicians involved in assembling the plants could naturally become operators afterward.
That assumption quickly proved wrong.
Operating facilities requires:
operational discipline
process understanding
maintenance culture
shift organization
preventive maintenance
safety procedures
operational leadership
And health & safety rapidly became one of the biggest challenges we faced.
At the beginning, we had clearly underestimated the operational exposure associated with these activities.
As projects became larger and longer, we progressively had to recruit completely different profiles:
operators
maintenance specialists
HSE professionals
field supervisors
operational managers
We were no longer simply delivering equipment.
We had become responsible for complete industrial operations.
Execution Is Ultimately About Understanding Reality
Looking back, one of the most important lessons from that period is that execution should never be underestimated.
What appears operationally simple from outside may involve very high levels of technical, organizational, and human complexity.
Execution is not only about technology.
It is about understanding how systems will actually function in real life:
how projects will be built
how facilities will be operated
how people will work
how maintenance will be performed
how safety will be managed
how organizations will react under pressure
And that requires much more than technical expertise alone.
It requires operational thinking from the very beginning.
In many industries today, that capability itself is becoming a major competitive advantage again.
