kaw su-zanne

My strongest asset is my work ethic and my willingness to step in when needed. I’m not afraid to take on a difficult project that nobody else wants because those are the clients and projects that teach me the most. I typically love to work outside of my job description and do whatever is asked of me

For the past 14 years, I’ve been working as a construction purchasing at various company. I have some background working in main contractor, developer and subcontractor . Throughout my career, I’ve enjoy communicating with suppliers and vendors as well with people from inter department. I also like to analyses data of purchases so that I can collaborate bulk purchases to save costs.

For example, in my last company, I am handling more than 10 ongoing projects. I notice that we could save if we could standardize few of the major materials that are fast moving goods for most of the projects. From there I can be negotiated for a better pricing and goods to be stock up once a month. During delivery of materials to the respective site, we identify the few project sites that are located near to each other and select 3 days in a week that will be allocated to these few sites. In this way, site people will be informed that ad-hoc planning is not encourage and they are requiring to pre-plan their delivery schedule in advance. With this delivery schedule given in advance, I could do spending forecast and ensure that the credit limit will be within limit.

When I started at LCS Contract, their operating costs were high, and overseas shipments were messy. I noticed the material site order submitted at last minute, where overseas suppliers require 3 weeks for production and approximately 2 weeks to reach Port Klang from Guangzhou, China and longer if from Shanghai. Hence, by using collaborative skills to communicate with the operation department, I requested an advance forecast material planning from the senior project manager to avoid last minute order rush. I’ve also successfully sourced a substitute product from a new supplier from China resulting a different pricing from initial supplier of 30%.

For example, if the goods are required in May, material request (MR) have to submit by March, and if approval for material request takes longer time, more time frame is required. Since month of May have Labor Day holidays, is better for the shipments to arrive at end of April to avoid shipment stuck at demurrage and incur warehouse cost. The next issue to tackle on would be the warehouse spacing issue if the materials arrive at much earlier date than anticipated.

As I build more supplier relationship with suppliers, some suppliers offer FOB terms at cheaper rate but their selection of port will have transit at this port and risk delay. So, it’s important for me to judge the importance of stock urgency to arrive on time or if this is an advance shipment for warehouse stock purpose. Furthermore, if it’s a FCL I’ll have to fully maximize the containers to be able to fill up to 30cbm but integrating few orders together from same suppliers to save on shipping fees and time. Meanwhile, in the local context, under my leadership, I was able to cut costs, by 5%, where I implemented Mdrive system software to the lorry to monitor & track the location and reduce usage of diesel.

Therefore, I usually communicated clearly and build relationship with overseas Suppliers and through business transactions I would evaluate them through metrics such as on-time feedback and delivery, quality and cost performance. 

Master of Business Administration, University of Sunderland

Bachelor degree of Marketing, University of Hertfordshire