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Can you talk a little about the work and
the aims of the Business Development
Department?
Fatih Can (VP, Business Development):
Tekfen Construction has a Strategic Plan
that outlines its goals for the next five years
and the regions and the sectors in which it
wishes to work. As the Business Develop-
ment Team, we strive to develop concrete
strategies in line with this plan and work
hard to ensure we do not miss any oppor-
tunies. We are constantly trying to turn reli-
able and respected customers’ projects into
concrete business by joining forces with the
right partners.
Uluç Keskin (Head of Business Develop-
ment):
As Tekfen Construction, we would
like as many of the projects we bid for to
originate from the Business Development
Department. One can never predict where
the “business” lies. What matters here is hu-
man relations. We represent the company to
the outside world, we are responsible for
presentations, publicity, participation at
conferences and gatherings, and researching
micro- and macro-markets. Even without
any specific target project, we must visit
many countries and scrutinize its general
business environment. Whether it is local or
foreign contractors that are being given the
go ahead, how the country is run, whether
the climate is suitable for us to do business
in… You could say that the foundation of
our work is forming information networks,
being open and confident, being prepared
for lots of travel, being multilingual and able
to easily communicate with others. We fol-
low the market, analyse its dynamics, and
try to predict future development based on
our evaluations. We carry the responsibility
of generating and maintaining sound con-
tacts in line with Tekfen’s goals. Conse-
quently, in terms of preserving a steady
backlog, we do not have the luxury of relax-
ing even for a moment, of falling into com-
placency thinking we already have enough
projects on the go.
Ferda Gürtay (Business Development
Engineer):
One aspect of our work is to
properly maintain our Certificates of Com-
pletion, as those are the records that can be
shown to any management team or employ-
er about projects you did. In order to com-
pete for a public tender, one has to have un-
dertaken similar projects over the last 15
years. Therefore, procuring this certificate
from the relevant office at the end of a proj-
ect is vitally important and we pursue this
work diligently to make sure our records are
up to date and complete. Moreover, all Cer-
tificates of Completion to be used in bids for
public tender up to the beginning of 2018
must be registered and uploaded to the Pub-
lic Procurement Authority. Documents that
have not been registered are not accepted.
We are thus keeping track of our records in
this context too.
With such a wide radar, what are your
sources of information? How do you
stay on track?
Fatih Can:
We read a lot and try not to miss
anything. We keep track of many publica-
tions and also maintain contact with the
management teams we have previously
worked with, and so manage to learn a lot
from them. We are not the only ones looking
for opportunities; our parters and our com-
petitors are out there too. There is no such a
thing as a standard channel or procedure.
We need to look at everything. Our source
may be a visit we have made, or an an-
nouncement for bids for tender. It may even
be somebody walking into the lobby and
saying, “I’m going to have a skyscraper built
in Senegal.” We try to talk to everybody, but
we make sure we are discreet and meticu-
lous when we do so. Because the Tekfen Bid-
ding Department comes in right after us. If
we say yes, they spring into action and will
spend months on preparing a bid, and their
efforts will turn into work and thus employ-
ment for thousands of people.
Is the story about the skyscraper in
Senegal true?
Burak Henden (Senior Business Devel-
opment Engineer):
Information reaches
us via a number of channels. It can be an
email or a telephone call, but whatever it is,
we take each one seriously. The gentleman
Fatih Can mentioned contacted us with ref-
erence from the Council of Commerce at the
Embassy of Senegal in Ankara. We checked
who he was and confirmed he was indeed
from an eminent and well-known Senega-
lese family. He owns a valuable plot of land
in the city centre on which he wants to build
a block of luxury flats and he wanted us to
collaborate with him. We sometimes get
these odd individual cases. But that’s not
that easy. For instance, if we were to do busi-
ness in Senegal, we would need to know ev-
erything we can about the country: where it
is, what kind of country it is, its culture, the
cultural and political climate, its suitability
for business, and so on. For us to be inter-
ested in any project, it must be in line with