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Experienced hand at the helm of WorleyParsons RSA

Company News Friday, April 8, 2016: WorleyParsons

The new head of WorleyParsons RSA, Francis McNiff, is no stranger to the South African operation as he is already Regional Managing Director, Sub Saharan Africa for WorleyParsons and has been based in South Africa for the past three and a half years. He takes over at a challenging time, with mining activity – which has traditionally been the mainstay of the South African business – currently at a low ebb. He is confident, however, that WorleyParsons RSA will continue to cope with market conditions very successfully and strengthen its reputation as one of the leading engineering groups operating in the Sub Saharan Africa region.

McNiff’s appointment makes for strong continuity, as he has had overall responsibility for WorleyParsons RSA for some time, with the ex-CEO Digby Glover having reported to him over the past couple of years. “In essence, I’m just extending my current role as Head of Sub Saharan Africa to also include the day-to-day management of the South African operation,” he says.

Glover, of course, was a capable CEO and McNiff says WorleyParsons is sorry to lose him. “He leaves with our best wishes and our thanks for the sterling work he did in overseeing the integration of the TWP organisation into the WorleyParsons Group, a process which effectively started in 2013 – when WorleyParsons acquired TWP – and which was successfully completed during his tenure,” he notes.

Scottish by birth and a structural engineer by training (his degree is from Heriot-Watt University), McNiff has spent a major part of his career with WorleyParsons, having joined one of the predecessor companies of the Group in 1989, after having started his career with the UK arm of American engineering company, Brown & Root (as it was then known).

During his time with WorleyParsons he has been based in a number of geographic locations, including the US, the UK, the Middle East, Asia and, of course, South Africa. “I was involved in the set-up of the WorleyParsons operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Mozambique and South Africa and I’ve been involved with the South African business since it started up,” he relates. “Our entry point to South Africa was the acquisition of Pangaea in 2008, followed by our takeover of KV3 in 2011 and, of course, TWP in 2013.”

On the subject of the current recession in mining, he says that WorleyParsons RSA is not immune to the market situation and – like all its peers – is having to find ways of taking cost out of the business and working more efficiently.

“Fortunately, we operate not only in the metals and minerals space but also the hydrocarbons and infrastructure sectors, so we are well diversified,” he explains. “Being part of a global group also helps as the resources of the South African operation – which, incidentally, is our global centre of excellence when it comes to mining and precious metals – are being increasingly deployed outside of Africa, which means that we are not solely dependent for business on the African resources market. Our people in South Africa are currently contributing their skills to projects in Europe, South America and Asia and this involvement overseas will only grow in the future.”

He adds that one of WorleyParsons’ strengths is its ability to workshare seamlessly over multiple locations. “Our projects are typically executed from more than one location which means that clients are able to tap into our huge depth of global expertise, wherever their projects are situated. This is not at the expense, however, of a deep understanding of local markets and conditions. Our credo is ‘Local Delivery of Global Capability’, which means that our clients effectively get the best of both worlds.”

Looking specifically at the Southern African mining market (the one of most interest to Modern Mining’s readers), McNiff concedes that new capex has all but dried up but says the need for mine owners to extract the maximum value from existing assets has opened up opportunities for WorleyParsons’ Improve business, one of its four business lines. “Improve focuses on providing customers with global best practice solutions for the optimisation of assets and is positioned to do well in the current mining environment,” he says.

He also notes that WorleyParsons is still seeing a healthy number of studies coming through from clients across all the sectors in which it operates. “These are now handled by our new advisory services business line, Advisian, which is designed – amongst other things – to allow us to dominate the front end of the project cycle,” he explains.

Advisian – which now employs over 3 000 people in 19 countries and which offers a unique combination of technical, business and strategic consulting services – has been deliberately positioned to have a degree of independence from the rest of the WorleyParsons Group. “Advisian in Africa, for example, does not report to me but to its own global CEO. Obviously, though, WorleyParsons’ involvement in projects will sometimes start with Advisian so it will be a key driver of growth within the Group and the key of course is to convert some of the Advisian studies into actual work on the ground which can be executed by our Services or Major Projects business lines.”.

Looking at WorleyParsons globally, McNiff says the Group – which employs approximately 30,000 people around the globe – has thus far managed to remain resilient, posting aggregated revenue of $7,23 billion in FY 2015 and 105 significant contracts secured in 2015. “The Group has been undergoing a restructuring since 2014 to align it with market shifts and this has seen the establishment of the current business line structure, which will position it for sustainable growth in a very fast changing business environment,” he says.