PRIMEX will broaden its consulting expertise by offering services for projects newly identified as priority investment areas by major donor institutions.
While the firm has maintained a high reputation in designing and implementing investment projects in fishery,,coastal resource management, health, environment, and irrigation, it is now considering expanding its core areas of expertise to the sectors of water resource management, education, finance, urban infrastructure and human resource management.
At a strategic planning workshop held by the company’s management and staff in Dacha, Tagaytay City last week, newly-installed PRIMEX Chair Dr Jerome F. Sison stressed the need to further diversity PRIMEX’s expertise in view of the adjustments in priority investments by donor clients like the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Aside from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Bank, and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), among others. The ADB has been one of PRIMEX’s top clients since the company’s founding almost two decades ago.
ADB now prioritizes road transport, energy, urban infrastructure (water supply, sanitation, waste management, and urban transport), rural infrastructure (roads, power, irrigation, and water management), education and financial sector under its Medium-Term Strategy II (2006-2008), the second in a series of medium-term strategies designed to flesh out the approach of the Long-Term Strategic Framework: 2001-2015. Given this new focus, Sison stressed the need to forge new strategic alliances to strengthen PRIMEX’s capability in delivering consulting services in its expanded areas of work as well as the need to intensify its internal capacity to implement projects beyond its conventional expertise.
PRIMEX has been strategically partnering with various local and international firms in project bidding while recruiting new in-house technical staff and new consultants to its database of experts, among them was in the health sector.
This year, two health projects on epidemiological surveillance have been awarded to PRIMEX by the ADB, the latest of which includes improving the surveillance, response and control capacities against communicable diseases by health authorities in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. PRIMEX, being the lead firm, associated with Singapore Health Services Pte Ltd in Singapore, PT Trans Intra Asia in Indonesia and with Health Solutions Group, Malaysia in implementing the said health/IT project.
Apart from enhancing the company’s track record in the health sector, PRIMEX President and CEO Elvira Ablaza also said PRIMEX is eyeing partnerships with more local and international engineering firms in implementing projects for urban infrastructure and irrigation.
Ablaza also expressed optimism about PRIMEX’s expertise in implementing human resource management interventions, one of the priority investment projects identified by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) for the Philippines.
A number of past projects implemented by PRIMEX had built-in training/capability-building components competently manned by its pool of HR experts. (ADY)