KAIZEN, SMALL STEPS TO BECOME BETTER IN LIFE

Sometimes we think we need to do a very big steps to have an extra-ordinary succesful life.

But in some steps, we will stuck on laziness and it will bring us to the deep  stagnan life.

Do you ever hear about KaiZen?

Yep...

This is kind of a good knowledge Japanese bring to the world and these KaiZen approach lead some multi-national company to their successful stories.

Today I was listening a podcast regarding this and it made me realize that KaiZen is really important for our life.

In KaiZen, we can do something which is better for our life continously.

No need to do that for long time on the beginning. Just took couple of minutes on your life for doing good things daily, with the same time and same periods, it will gave you a huge impact on your life.

Okay.

Let me explain it to you.

For example if you're a lazy people who don't like to do exercise, you can start to do a very small exercises daily, like 5 minutes every day in the morning after you woke up. Do it everyday without any distraction and you'll feel something different happens on your life.

You'll feel better day by day and there's a possibility you'll increase your exercises time you have.

These kind of KaiZen can apply to whole of side of our life. For being more healthy, smart, clean, and for girls, to being more beautiful we need to apply KaiZen methods.

Of course cleaning our face every nights after whole day make up, cleaning it, apply toner, serum, vitamin and night cream will gave a huge impacts for our fair skin.

For boys, these KaiZen methods also help us to being more smart and bold as a guy. Reading books/ articles daily can makes us be more wise. In other side, these kind of things will increase our skills and knowledge too.

So, after I realize about these methods, from now on I tried to make my KaiZen Goals. Now I only have 5 KaiZen Goals :

1. I want to do exercises after woke up in the morning every day. 5 minutes daily.

2. Before lunch time, I will do small exercises again 5 minutes daily.

3. Every day I'll spend 15 minutes for learning new languange. Nowadays I learn Japanese and re-call my French ability.

4. At night time I'll spend 1 hour for reading any books or any articles.

5. Every day I'll spend 1/2 hour for writing my blogs or writing my nouvel/poems. Anything I want to write.

So, this is my KaiZen Goals, soon maybe it will increase. ^_^

Wise in Choose The Appropriate Dredging Contract

This article is a resumed from "Managing Risks : How to Select the Appropriate Dredging Contract" a paper has been prepared by the Central Dredging Association (CEDA) Working Group on Effective Contract Type Selection (WGECS), TERRA ET AQUA

So, I'll make a simple resume for you to more understand how to be wise in choosing the appropriate dredging contract.

There are 6 main steps in choosing a dredging contract :

Step 1. Project Basis (Scope/Owner Requirements)

At this step, first we need to considered type of our dredging. Is that a maintenance dredging, capital dredging, land reclamation, coastal protection or offshore/seabed dredging. 

After we know it, we can prepare the dredging elements like doing preliminary studies which include surveys (multibeam, hydrographic, soil, environmental, UXO - Unexploded Ordnance, underwater installation/infrastructure, archaeological, morphological. Then we can start to prepare design, engineering, permits and financing design.

Then on the third step of project basis we can prepare the execution elements such as contract management requirements; monitoring; inspections; surveys; and research internally.

Step 2. Packaging of Work

In this step we can make WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) for our project. We can see what type of dredging we need, the available capacity or expertise; elements of projects and how we bundle outsourced elements. In some area, due to lack of material, we need to double think about how to manage our equipments and materials. We need to thinking more about the risk which we will face if we outsourced some elements.

Step 3. Risk/Opportunity Analysis

After we understand enough about what we do and what we need, we can start to analyze the risk. Nowadays, some company already used ANN (Artificial Neural Networks) for analyze the risk of their project.

In general, we can do risk and market analysis for our project. Considering technicala, legal, financial, geographical, spatial and safety elements is one of important things we can do. We need to know client knowledge/expertise level and know who is best suited to manage the various types of dredging and other aspects of risks. We can accept or avoid the risk. When we avoid, at that time we invite the insurance for accept our risks. Surely, the decisions will taken based on some deep analysis. At this stage also we need to know when or how to involve contractors.

Step 4. Contract type selection

At this step we need to know well the type of contracts according the risk and analysis we got from step 3. At the bottom table, there's some characteristics, responsibility allocation and boundary conditions for several contracts.

Step 5. Procurement Method
At this step, we start to prepare and evaluate design; awarding on price/quality (value for money). On this stage, the output of a value engineer is important. Because they will choose which method based on the comparison between value and cost. On this procurement method we will decide contract management and tender procedure. A good market analysis, including an estimation of the equilibrium of demand (for services) and supply (of providers), is very useful in procurement.
At this stage, we need to legally required to follow public procurement procedure, private tendering procedure. After following both of that procedure, we will get results : a contract with or without prequalification, competitive dialogue, BAFO/ Best and Final Offer, Negotiation. After that only we reach the next level is Contract Award. In some cases, there's no negotiation so that we can reach Direct Contract Award.

Step 6. Procurement process leading to contract award
After we reached the Contract Award, then the next things to do are:
- Relying on quality management and certificates of the contractor;
- Monitoring systems or mankind control of amounts or constructions;
- Independet inspection to be hired.

Here I attached the flowchart of this 6 steps.

In general, there's 5 key aspects we can consider while we choose the dredging contracts. That 5 keys aspect are:

1. Project Scope

2. Physical/environmental site conditions

3. Risk Allocation/liabilities

4. Owner's control/contractor's flexibility

5. Time&Schedule

6. Price and valuation

Okay, hope this resume can help you!!! :)