The Cross-cultural Management Research Of SEPCO Oversea EPC Contract Power Plant Project

With the rapid development of power plant construction in China, and also because of the saturated demand of electricity load caused by the economic slowdown in recently years, it is inevitable for SEPCO(Shandong Electric Power Company) to develop the power project oversea market and occupy more market share in the world. To bid more oversea contracting project, SEPCO can obtain more profit, also it can be increased the export of domestic equipment and material as well as to digest excess producing capacity in China.During SEPCO carry out the oversea EPC contacting power project, many conflict and contradiction, caused by improper disposal for cross-cultural management issues of the social environment, laws and regulations, values, project cultural management conflict, etc. were often faced. The cross-culture risk may be caused because of them. For the SHAYBAH power plant project which is under construction by SEPCO, besides the conflict and contradiction mentioned above, more cross-cultural management issues of project level should be conducted by SEPCO also such as project organization and management mode, choice of project manager, personnel quality, overall coordination of EPC project, the parent company management, safety and quality management, etc. If SEPCO can’t conduct the issues reasonable, the difficulty of the project performance, bad cost control and schedule control, safety and quality accidents existing may be caused. For individual project, worse result such project execution cost overruns and project rejection by the owner were occurred.To research the cross-cultural management of oversea power plant project, is extremely necessary and guided for SEPCO’s oversea market development, improvement of internationalization and advanced project execution ability, etc.In this dissertation, the cross-cultural management of SEPCO’s oversea EPC contractual project was studied, with the integrated using of literature research, project analysis, and system analysis, to find the causes of cross-cultural conflict and risk and characteristics. Through the analysis to SHAYBAH project, the cross-cultural conflict communication and coordination by SEPCO project management team with project stakeholders, and the taken corresponding measures in engineering phase, procurement phase and construction phase were studied also.On the basis of the above research and analysis, in this dissertation, some measures and proposals were recommended as bellows for the cross-cultural management of SEPCO’s oversea EPC contractual project.1. In order to strengthen the implementation control effectively in the whole process of the project, the project management team should set up a whole consciousness of the cross-cultural management. The project manager and involved managerial staff should have a correct idea such as fully coordination, fusions about cross-cultural management, with which to guide all their practice in implementation process of the project, and to set up the win-win concept among SEPCO, Owners and sub-contractors at the same time. Through mutual understanding and cooperation, all project involved parties can achieve their expected goals.2. To ensure the smooth execution of the project, some actions should be taken such as: taking perfect countermeasures about cross-cultural management, setting up risk assessment system, early warning system and response mechanism through the identification & analysis about the two kind’s cultural difference, setting up a good cross-cultural management project team through the compatibility of the cultural fusion, etc.The cross-cultural theory about the oversea power plant project in this dissertation was discussed meaningfully, however, it should be further refined, researched and verified in subsequent oversea EPC project. So far, only few of the China enterprises involved oversea EPC project conducted the project under the guidance of cross-cultural management theory & study, it means the refinement and realistic were too weak in cross-cultural study in China at present and to instruct the oversea EPC project performance perfectly. Therefore, it is important for the further study of how to instruct the project implementation and how to enrich and amend the cross-cultural management theory.