TCQ Triangle organised the second annual Arab Outsourcing Conference and Expo 2010 in Dubai.  Over 250 delegates from a range of industries across the Middle East attended the conference, where speakers from a range of backgrounds covered outsourcing opportunities in the areas of IT, HR, Cloud Computing, Facilities Management and O&M.  Mike Levery's keynote speech focused on the lessons to be learned from Railtrack's disastrous outsourcing of maintenance in the late 1990's.  The master-class covered the following areas:

Operations and Maintenance relationship using Herzberg's motivators and hygiene factors

Risk and accountability between Operations and Maintenance for asset performance

Maintenance objective setting and applying input and output measures

Financial structures for maintenance covering Opex and Capex

Forms of contract and application in the maintenance arena

Maintenance contract governance, structure, and management with a case study

Maintenance contract risks and accountabilities, incentives, target cost and gain/pain share

Maintenance contract administration and performance review

This is early days in the field of outsourcing for many middle eastern organisations.  For O&M, there is a dearth of skilled craftsmen with currently little service provision of O&M skills even in the facilities management market.  The problems of an ageing maintenance workforce are as apparent here as they are in the western world.  Boardroom assumptions purely based on cost saving through outsourcing are also commonplace, and an education process is needed to help directors become aware of the pitfalls of outsourcing maintenance when the marketplace is immature.