The fourth largest financial hub in the world, Singapore is one of the fastest growing and fastest moving business sectors in the world. Especially the construction industry which, having weathered the global economic downturn of 2008 better than the United Kingdom and the United States, has continued to expand and diversify offering a scope of opportunities to the companies savvy enough to keep up.

WRITTEN BY DON CAMPBELL

DIRECTING ASIA’S CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

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MERX CONSTRUCTION

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Merx Group was founded in 2001 by William, with the key focus being project and cost management for two clients; Clear Channel International and Adshel

who were responsible for the advertising on bus stops and bus shelters across Singapore. Considering the dependency Singapore has on public transport it is not surprising that this contract, which was originally only a year, lasted two years and gave the young company the comfort-zone to set their feet and determine their future plans.

“Since the beginning our focus and targets have developed,” William says, describing how his company had since taken the reigns in project, construction and procurement management, programming and scheduling, quantity surveying and contract administration, building due diligence and space and occupancy analysis studies for both workplace and retail, “As consultants we provide skills and expertise via resources into a project. We interface with clients, contractors and consultants to provide the best and most quantifiable outcome possible.”

After four years of working the Singapore market, offices were then established in Dubai (2005), Malaysia (2006) and Hong Kong (2007) with the latest office in Myanmar being set up this year in 2014.

“The core activity throughout,” he continues, “Is providing fee based professional consulting services to our clients. The “foundation service” is project management for interior fit-out and new build projects with particular focus on corporate offices, retail tenancies and hospitality such as hotels. Combining with project management we include cost management (QS), site management and commercial construction management.”

William explains that his background has always been in construction having originally earned a Bachelor of Construction

MERX CONSTRUCTION

Endeavour Magazine was fortunate enough to speak with Australian borne founder and owner of Merx Group, William Forwood, regarding the various machinations of the Asian construction industry and to outline what it takes to be a success in the construction sector.

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and Construction Management at RMIT University in Melbourne, he worked on a number of inner city high-rise conversion projects in Melbourne before seeking out further opportunities in Hong Kong in 1996. From there he went to Singapore and has been there for the last 14 years.

“Initially, it was purely for the professional opportunity,” he says, “As I had a family connection there but having moved to Singapore and set up a growing company here it has been the main reason for me staying in the country.”

Businesses never turn out the way you expect, he says candidly, “Everything is an opportunity and we’ve worked all around South East Asia, although we don’t have offices everywhere, we’ve ducked our heads into new territories across India, Philippines and Thailand.”

William believes that the diversity and culture that a company is exposed to when working across so many different regions, even when they are neighbours, can take a business to another level. Things move fast in Asia and you have to think and act dynamically to keep up with the project activity.

Having built up a healthy client base and established a solid reputation, Merx Group have found themselves in the position where they are able to assess which projects they wish to work with, “We don’t have the pure luxury of choosing which clients we work with all the time,” he says, “As we are part of the economic cycle but the business has grown to the point where we are able to and

do refer work to smaller companies. We see this as a sign of growth and no work in the premium end of market, retail, hospitality and corporate construction.”

As companies grow, responsibilities grow as well and with more employees come more mouths to feed so selecting the projects that will not only provide the best returns but also promise future work and return work is important and part of the Merx Group’s approach to growth.

The Asian Market Place“Across Asia the construction industry is generally buoyant,”

William says, “There is strong demand for project management services in the established markets that we work in which are Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong.”

According to William, the emerging markets in Asia are yet to fully understand and therefore recognise the need for project management on their projects. These emerging market clients still tend to deliver their projects in a ‘design and build’ fashion or ‘client direct’ management approach. There are some areas where Merx Group have been able to demonstrate the importance of their services, “In a market like Myanmar we have been able to show our clients that professional project management helps improve delivery quality and co-ordination and dramatically reduces our clients’ risk and exposure to cost overruns and programme slippage.”

“Individual staff development is a real focus as we drive staff promotion and succession planning for staff as they progress in their careers,” he says, speaking about how the company is 13 years old now, and many staff have been with the firm longer than six years, which he sees as a great sign, “Staff have built their careers, joining at an early stage and progressing through many projects. They have learnt and evolved into the senior leaders within the firm.”

Long term relationships outside the staffing ranks are just as important to Merx as they are inside with repeat business being an intrinsic part of the Merx brand and the company ethos. “The company values are Agility, Excellence, Integrity, Teamwork and Passion,” William tells us, “These values are brought into each project we undertake for our clients and living these values is the essence of our customer focus and customer satisfaction guarantee.”

Aftersales is also a key part of their business, he says, “The quality of our service offering culminates in the creation of an ‘asset’ for our clients. Whether it is a new office, retail store, hotel, industrial building, restaurant or data centre, the quality of our overall project management service is to a large reflected in the end result.”

The Merx core strategy is to focus on forging long-term relationships with clients. To achieve this, Merx provides on-going support in the form of non-biased independent advice for any of the client’s project, construction and property needs, “The strategies we have in place to differentiate ourselves from our competitors

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There have, however, been a few hurdles that Merx Group has had to face and overcome, ranging from the Dot.com crash in the early 2000s to SARS in 2003, although he does point out that comparatively, Hong Kong was hit harder by that than Singapore, nevertheless it did scare off a few people. Since 2008 however, things have been stable and growing exposure coming off the back of big corporates working in Europe and America and as well as a number of Asian operations shoring up their businesses, “For a while the attitude was to stabilise and grow,” William recalls, “Both of which are good for us.”

Inside Merx GroupWith consultancy being a very much face-to-face industry and

with 35 employees across their markets, William is actively involved in ensuring his employees are all on the same page. All of the Merx active ‘client facing staff’ that work on fee generating projects are degree qualified and the qualifications held vary across the fields of architecture, engineering (structural, electrical or mechanical) and quantity surveying. Each year all of the staff engage in additional training outside their day-to-day work life.

“Also we have developed a framework for delivering projects, which is an in house system called ‘Octagon’ that all staff are trained in,” William explains that is an 8-step gateway process for delivering projects from inception through to close out.

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include leveraging new markets, improved services, employing great staff and team leaders and encouraging their training and upskilling.”

Developing long term relationships, delegation of tasks to the most competent of employees and staff, focus on consulting and developing repeat business are some of the keys that William has learnt are important, “It’s important to employ people who are better than you,” he says sagely.

These sorts of hard learned management strategies will be needed for the future projects that are going to be approached in 2015. Merx is focussing on expansion plans for 2015, “During the course of 2014, we have looked at geographies and sectors and driven these two pillars.”

Moving into 2015 they are taking on large projects in Myanmar with a particular reference to hotels and mixed use and have re-launched the Merx Hong Kong office with the engagement of a new director for Hong Kong, Macau and PRC. They will be employing new staff and working with some great clients in Hong Kong and the region in 2015.

Indonesia is a new market that Merx will be opening offices in, thanks to a joint venture with a large MNC real estate firm. Like Myanmar the focus will be on hotels, mixed use and large scale fit-out projects. With the re-launch of Hong Kong and new offices in Myanmar and Indonesia they will start serving their core clients in multiple cities through Asia which will enable them to deliver around

the SEA region on multi city/multi project commissions. Merx will also have a regional leadership team established which will meet quarterly and the plan is to grow in the established Asian markets and emerging markets reflecting the new dawn for the countries with young demographics, rising middle classes and large populations.

During the second quarter of 2013 Merx started an ongoing investment into branding of the sectors they operate in such as corporate office, retail and their new sector, hospitality. The branding involved upgrading the company website, aligning company collateral, brochures, marketing documents and staff inductions. Along with this Merx invested into their two in-house systems; their project system (Merx Octagon) and the online pre-qualification system (Merx PQ)

“We have also brought on a new Project Director to lead the Retail and Hospitality division and a new head of hospitality,” William tells us, “And in September Merx had its yearly ‘all staff off site’ to Sentosa Island which was a focused day of training and team building.”

He ensures us that the investment will continue into 2015 as they continue to develop their systems with new clients in Asia and that they will continue to grow, develop and influence the course of Asia’s construction industry.