The practice
Twenty five years on site, one method, one time zone
Place Maker is a construction consultancy based in Noumea, New Caledonia. It works for contractors bidding on heavy civil packages and for operators who need independent representation on capital works running into the hundreds of millions.
What twenty five years on site change
The difference between an estimate and a price that holds lies in details only execution teaches: the real output of an earthworks fleet on a remote site, the lead time of an imported material, the consequence of a badly bounded interface between two packages, the way an indexation clause behaves over a long operation. Those elements sit inside every study produced. They come from twenty five years of directing works on both sides of the contract, contractor first and then client, on scopes reaching EUR 50.3 m.
Where the method comes from
Major contractor standards, from the first site
Major earthworks and primary drainage on a French high speed rail line, hydraulic structures and drainage in the Congo with SOGEA SATOM, civil works in Saudi Arabia with OGER International. International procedure learned inside the majors.
Twenty years in the Pacific, 2004 to 2024
Directing multi package sites for private and public clients, then owner side roles for Vale New Caledonia, the SAEML Nord Avenir development company and Glencore KNS. Earthworks, services, roads, bridges, buildings and refurbishment.
Quality assurance built for operators
Inspection and test plans, hold points, requests for information, non conformity reports and corrective action tracking, snag clearance, as built dossiers and handover. The vocabulary an operator's own auditors expect to read.
Qualification and languages
Master of science, civil engineering, University of Aix Marseille. French native, English working level, on site and in client meetings.
The way of working
Nothing is asserted without a source
Every quantity points to the document it was taken from. Every rate points to its build up. What remains uncertain is flagged as such rather than filled in with a silent assumption.
Assumptions are written down
A figure without its assumptions cannot be read back six months later. Every study carries its assumptions note, which makes it possible to reopen, challenge and update it.
Scope is bounded before starting
What is included and what is not appears in the proposal, with the expected approval time and the treatment of rework beyond it.
The toolset
The practice runs a processing chain built for heavy civil tenders: systematic reading of the tender package, take off of quantities from the issued documents, a build up library capitalised from one contract to the next, and a variance dashboard for managed operations. Progress is measured by earned value under the PMI method: planned value, earned value, actual cost, and the cost and schedule performance indices that follow. On an operation worth hundreds of millions, that is what makes drift visible while it is still cheap. The tool serves verification, the judgement stays human.
Key facts
Working together
Whether you are preparing a bid or protecting an operation already under way, the first conversation establishes whether the need matches.