A Brief Statement about Turkish Contractors Working Abroad

"Kendi çalışması için bana ulaşan Berington Üniversitesi Profesörü Noah Coburn'nun isteği üzerine  kaleme alınan iki yazıdan birincisi."

30.01.2016

Turkish companies have a large scale and variety of construction related contracts in near geography including all ex-soviet countries, Africa, Balkans and Arabic countries. In short term, aim of Turkish construction sector is expending this area to South America. This is a huge success for national construction sector. You cannot find similar Turkish economic success in another field of world economy. Actually this is almost “weird” because, even in construction related fields we have nothing to compare with the success of Turkish Contractors. For example, I can recommend you to look ENR (Engineering News-Record) lists (www.enr.com). There is a list named Top 250 International Contractors. 43 Companies of top 250 contractors are Turkish. If you look to another list named Top International Design Firms, you can see that among top 225 companies, number of Turkish firms is only 6. This is a nice example of the unbalanced situation. In general we are still behind as documentation and academic researches. Our knowledge only depends on individual experiences. This is a crucial disadvantage. Turkish people from workers to managers have a strange nature: they all focused to finish the job early. Safety and quality are usually not our first concern. If there is no serious authority which dictates quality and safety norms, schedule and any kind of procedures, contractors are still producing them but they are all fake and not applicable. These problems exist even in projects which have billion dollars of contract value.

The question is “With this critical disadvantage, how are they managing to be leading contractors in this geography?” In my opinion, the answer is “pragmatism”. If you dictate a quality and safety system and force to obey necessary procedures, Turkish companies are perfect applicators. They are all expert of solving problems in countries which have no strict rules, law and procedures.

Construction business has some unique characteristics. Products of this sector are projects such as dams, roads, buildings etc… We always have to modify our manpower, budget, logistics and materials depend on that unique one product for every individual projects. Our manufacturing location is temporary, not stable like a factory. Our daily basis problems are usually particular for that moment and usually are not predictable. Due to these reasons, in construction business, “pragmatism” is usually able be a rival to “scheduling”.

Other advantage of Turkish people and companies is cooperation skills with foreign companies. Although Turkish companies are not the best to create their own schedule and procedures, they are highly flexible and cooperative to work with procedures which are dictated by others. Because of this reason American-Turkish or European-Turkish joint-venture approaches are highly beneficial in this geography.  Turkish contractors, which work with American or European consultant companies, are also good solutions for same conditions.

Following specialty is maybe the best side of these companies: The ability to use foreign workforce efficiently. I am on this business for 5 years. In this short term, I’ve worked with Afghans, Russians, Hindu, Pakistani, Nepalese, Africans, Vietnamese, Middle Asians, Kurds and Arabs. In this period of time, I haven’t seen a company who works with these people much harmoniously than Turks. I am not sure about the reason of that. I guess it can be related with combination of communication and organization skills of Turkish people. Turkish society has been militarist and they ruled extremely wide multi-cultural empire for centuries.  It may create a habit of setting organization. But that empire also had an extremely huge bureaucracy. How and why we lost this ability with the passing time? The answer is still mysterious for me.

For the future, aims are so high, but also there are mortal dangers on the way. If we fail to create our brands, procedures, norms, academic researches and own technology in this business, in long term, it will be impossible to stand on foot for Turkish companies against recent rising competitors. China has lots of advantages and also they have cheap workforce. Usually they don’t need to use foreign workers. Their progress is much stable and balanced in subject of academic researches. We almost already lost gulf area to Chinese contractors. If we won’t take necessary precautions, same will occur soon in mentioned geography. 

Haldun ZIK