Key focus – project portfolio management

2009 MILESTONES All project companies now utilise the OMS 2 613 projects registered OMS supported 520 decisions and processed 3 407 transactions

2010 FOCUS Expand OMS to support allied project lifecycle processes, including business development, commercial, tax, insurance and governance.

Murray & Roberts has a non-negotiable commitment to sustainable earnings growth and value creation and believes this is possible only through a focus on risk management to preserve operating margin.

The Group has a long and proud record of major project delivery. It has been responsible for constructing much of the built environment in Southern Africa and involved in some of the world's great engineering challenges. In recent years the Group has entered a new era characterised by major projects with potentially high risk profiles.

Murray & Roberts has developed the capacity to better assess and manage these projects. The bespoke opportunity management system (OMS) controls the project approval process such that all opportunities entered into the tender process are evaluated against a suite of predetermined criteria. A scorecard approach allows management to determine the potential risk profile in a project, those which can proceed normally (green), and those which can proceed only after more rigorous evaluation (amber and red). If a project is approved through this latter process, a steering committee will be established to monitor the project through to final account.

Unitary Murray & Roberts enables the Group to exploit unique synergies in its various operations and engage major projects with collective strength. This approach has leveraged our ability to compete for some of the world's most challenging projects.

"Focus on Performance" benchmarks our leadership and systems capacity against the status of best-in-class in the engineering and construction sector. We continue to transform our operations, positioning them to offer superior propositions to their markets. Our leadership capacity has been strengthened to capitalise on a robust and growing construction economy.

The accepted international definition of a major project is one which exceeds the inherent capacity of an organisation to manage it within its existing resource and capacity. Partnership is a strategic imperative for the Group and we select our partners against criteria including market knowledge or technological expertise. The building and maintenance of strong relationships with major clients in key growth sectors is reflected in the order book, where much of the work secured is repeat business.

As an organisation, Murray & Roberts confidently seeks out risk to capitalise on its ability to benefit from its inherent opportunities. To achieve this, there is a need to coordinate and leverage the substantial resources within the organisation to improve the effectiveness of group risk management.

Number of project opportunities vs constraint filter (%) Value of project opportunities vs constraint filter (%)

Additional information is available in the sustainability report on page 94.