Challenge
The contractor had won a turnkey packaging hall contract with a hard commissioning date tied to a Saudi industrial city occupancy permit. Equipment scope included stainless conveyor modules, vertical form-fill-seal machines, checkweighers, and labeling cells — sourced competitively from China to protect project margin. Three suppliers submitted bundled quotations with attractive CIF Dammam pricing, but engineering review flagged gaps: motor nameplate specs did not match declared IEC ratings, spare parts lists were generic, and none provided verifiable export references to GCC food-grade installations.
A prior project delay on unrelated MEP imports had cost the contractor two weeks of liquidated damages when equipment arrived with incomplete documentation at King Abdulaziz Port. Internal risk policy now required independent supplier verification and factory audits on every OEM above SAR 500,000 equivalent before purchase order release. The project manager could not travel to China during the bid window and needed Nanjing-based field assessment confirming manufacturer status, production capacity for the eight-week build window, and export packaging suitable for breakbulk and containerized sea legs to import from China to Saudi Arabia corridors.
Coordination complexity was high: four equipment categories from two provinces, FAT witness requirements, bilingual operation manuals, and conformity documentation for electrical panels bound for KSA installation. Wiring deposits without verified capacity risked a cascading schedule failure across civil, MEP, and commissioning workstreams.
