Gulf Extreme Engineering – one of whose main focuses is the import, sale and transportation of a variety of fuel/lubricant in Middle East has a combined experience of over 8 years. It has also successfully conducted businesses in the garment manufacturing industry and logistics in the past.
The company currently has over 220 tank trucks to support its fuel/lubricants transportation and logistics shipment operations throughout various provinces of Afghanistan. The tankers that the company owns are all operational and maintained to the best standard.
GEE owns and operates a modern warehouse facility of 212,360 square feet in the Kabul Industrial Zone off Kabul-Jalalabad Road. The facility has every amenity that a modern world-class storage/warehouse facility should have. GEE also owns and operates similar facilities in Herat and Hairatan, both of which serve the west/south and north/east parts of the country respectively. All three of our facilities have been professionally designed and constructed to exceed the most rigid of international API standard.
Moreover, to have our professional and skilled drivers, freight handlers, quality supervisors, safety supervisors, storage/reserve operators and management up-to-date with their skills and safety measures, GEE has put in place a robust and rigorous training program that for new employees lasts 2 weeks and for existing employees it takes 3 days on an annual basis.
GEE has had vast experience in trade, supplying and procurement of fuels in the last few years. We have supplied and sold fuels to governmental and nongovernmental organizations as well as the open market throughout Afghanistan. The prominent contract we have performed thus far for the US Military has been the supplying of fuel to the Afghan National Security Forces.
Company’s Technical Capabilities
GEE has the experience of recently completing an IDIQ contract. This has given us an objective idea of how to go about conducting a series of feasibility studies in order to accommodate for similar contracts by assessing its monetary, non-monetary investments, as well as improving efficiency, adding more shifts, maximizing the equipment usage, training existing employees and hiring new workers.
This section of the business profile lays out three factors, as an opportunity for us to demonstrate our technical capabilities of fuel/lubricant fleet requirements for any potential project. These factors concisely address the maintenance and deployment capacity of our assets and delivery mechanism, quality control and vetting of the employees.
Fuel Storage Capabilities
As mentioned above, GEE owns 3 large fuel storages and 20 medium size distribution centers, from where the deliveries are made to our end-users. Therefore, supplying to any site in any of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan required by any potential projects are done efficiently, as has been done for the previous undertakings.
The company has the capacity to invest and procure up to USD50,000,000.00 in any project or combined projects of any caliber in the field of petroleum sale, transportation and distribution with the most efficient service possible in Afghanistan.
GEE owns and operates a modern warehouse facility of 212,360 square feet in the Kabul Industrial Zone off Kabul-Jalalabad Road. An investment of $6.27 million was made in the construction of the facility, which comprises of 3 large warehouses, oil reserve storages, a managerial office building, lounge area, kitchen, security room, locker rooms, vehicles parking lot and a green area. This facility at any given time has the potential capacity of tens of millions of liters of fuel. It has 13 tanker truck upload/download points. It also has a JP8 blending capability with injectors and on-site quality assurance.
Likewise, GEE owns and operates similar facilities in Herat and Hairatan, both of which serve the west/south and north/east parts of the country respectively. These facilities are similar in size and operations. They each have 5 RTC download points and 18 truck upload points. The overall storage capacity of each of these storages is 80 million US Gallons at any given time.
Moreover, these facilities possess and operate API standard filtration processes as well as epoxy coated jet storages. Please refer to Appendix A of this document for a few pictures of our facilities.
Operations and Processes of Fleet Deployment
GEE operational procedures, specifically enhanced with every previous project, govern the management of the fuel delivery to various sites in Afghanistan. These procedures comprise of day-to-day operations, such as managing the inventory, delivering fuel, managing the personnel and drivers, reporting to clients, preventing the company of unnecessary maintenance repairs on vehicles if they will be replaced soon, generating billings and vehicle maintenance as required – to name a few.
As part of its operational processes, GEE delegates the responsibilities to various teams to carry out their particular tasks in compliance with the specifications and requirements of every undertaken project.
Here is the list of departments and divisions, each with their specialization in certain task for superb management and deployment of fleet and on-time quality delivery of fuel:
Oversight: Every project, big or small, has oversight from the President of the company; will personally make commitment in terms of time and effort to ensure the superb quality of rendering service to our clients.
Project Management: This team, which will be in charge of the daily operations of any potential project, also has the authority to have an oversight over all other departments and effectively monitor their activities. In addition, they are tasked with providing routine reports as well as prompting the General Manager of any irregularities or problems. Under the supervision of the Project Management, the heads of all other departments will hold regular meetings on a twice weekly basis to discuss the operations of their tasks and get guidance if needed.
Quality Control: This team is responsible for not just the quality of the fuel being delivered, but also for the timeliness of delivery, customer satisfaction, prompt communication, cleanliness and maintenance of the facilities. Moreover, they are the primary people to correct any mistake made or any misstep taken in both the fuel itself, handling it or delivery of it. This team is also equipped with the fuel sample testing lab, which is compact and mobile and can be utilized anywhere in any of our facilities.
Delivery Management and Customer Relation: This department will primarily ensure that the fuel is delivered to our customers on a timely basis (within 24 hours if needed) and the required quality. This team is responsible for taking the order from the customer when there is a fuel delivery taking place. This team is available to the customers even during off business hours to run a smooth operation and communicate where the fleet is and set expectation.
The drivers are directly being supervised by this team as well. Furthermore, this team coordinates each and every delivery with the distribution center to make sure everybody is on the same page and has the same expectation, while complying with the requirements set forth in any given contract.In addition, it will also process orders for any fuel replacement due to any functional breakdown or delivery rejection by customer, as deemed necessary. This department supervises all the over
300 drivers that GEE generally deploys for fuel delivery on its contracts.
Billing and Invoicing: This department is responsible for the billing of the fuel delivery invoicing. The Delivery Team reports to the Billing Department of every delivery being taken place and send the delivery ticket to them. The Maintenance Team sends its reports of repairs rendered to this department.Each invoice generated by the system is stored per its unique serial number in our database. This allows us to retrieve historical invoices at any time. The Billing team can be certain that they are viewing the very copy of the invoice that a client is referring to, in case of any dispute. Finally, we usually send our invoices to the customers electronically in addition to the hard copy, as they become available for maximum efficiency.The majority of the tasks performed in this department are managed through sophisticated and specialized software called FleetWave that automates the invoicing and billing streamlining them for efficiency and better accuracy.
Procurement and Sourcing: We only purchase fuel that is of the compliance with the standards and countries set forth in the agreement with our clients. This team assesses the state of the storages in all our 3 large and 20 small facilities to make sure that we are supplied with the fuel necessary for our customers. In the event for any reason if Khawak is running out of the fuel it needs to deliver for a particular order, this team will purchase fuel from inside Afghanistan through GEE’s affiliated companies to ensure timeliness and quality.
Maintenance, Repair and Cleaning: There are two types of maintenance for this project – the fleet trucks themselves and tanks carrying fuel. Both of these maintenance procedure takes place in our facilities by this team. Our Kabul facility is the hub for all the scheduled maintenance and our Herat and Hairatan facilities are the secondary hubs. All these maintenance facilities are managed and operated by this team.Each of the team leaders outlined above are managed by the General Manager who oversees the daily activities of each team and subsequently report to the CEO. Advantages of the of specialization and division of work as outlined above include, but are not limited to, efficiency & productivity, reducing the operating costs, speeding up deliveries, transparency of all the processes and events, automatic data transfer from the order entry system for reporting, optimal order distribution and overall quality of work.
Maintenance/Repair/Cleaning of the Fleet
Another factor that has a big effect on whether or not the fuel is of good quality or whether or not the fuel is delivered on time or whether or not correct/standard fuel is delivered is the fleet maintenance and cleanliness.
We own and operate a fleet maintenance facility in Kabul. The lot itself is over 20 acres. The parking lot fits around 1000 vehicles at any given time. The maintenance facility alone stretches over 10,000 square feet, which has 3 large divisions. Please refer to Appendix B for a diagram of this facility.
This facility is used to park and service our vehicles. The procedure of servicing and cleaning of our vehicles is outlined below:
Perform scheduled maintenance every 2 months given driving through the harsh terrain of Afghanistan.
Perform nonscheduled maintenance service for all trucks, if they are in a condition to get to Kabul. If they are in a non-moving condition and the repair needs to be done on the site, then we can either send a mobile team of technicians through our contacts in many provinces of Afghanistan or ask the fuel delivery crew to have it fixed locally.
For the tank trucks to make sure the vehicles are well-maintained in order for the fuel to be clean and dry at all times, the following proactive maintenance procedure is deployed:
Every 3 months our tank trucks go through rigorous cleaning processes in our Kabul facility. This cleaning regiment includes but is not limited to depleting the tank of any remaining fuel, manual inspection of the tank through the man hole, using modern technology vacuum, clean and decontaminate the tanks and if needed pressure washed and dried, before being deployed back to service. Meanwhile, the minor repairs for any leakage or compromising factor will be fixed. This process varies from vehicle to vehicle whether one or more of the above cleaning steps will be taken, as the severity of the maintenance also varies.
The second level of cleaning and maintaining the tank trucks happens in one of 2 other fuel storage facilities either in Herat or Hairatan. These facilities are not equipped with the kind of modern technology that our Kabul facility is, but minor maintenance takes place over there in the event that that vehicle cannot get to Kabul.
The third level of cleaning and maintain our tank trucks takes place in the two dozen distribution centers that we operate for fuel delivery. This process that includes visual inspection, manual fixing and removing of any obvious compromising objects takes place on a daily basis, when the fleet is deployed for delivery and before loading the fuel.
The other precautionary measure that we practice is that we only use the fleet for the designated kind of fuel and not mix them; for instance, the fleet that carries diesel will only be utilized for diesel delivery.
Jet A1 fuel trucks are always used for that category of fuel only.
Quality Control Procedure
In an effort to meet and most often exceed the quality of service, GEE has developed its own instructions and checklists for best performance, quality of fuel and internal audit. Thereupon, we will share those documents with our customers.
GEE is confident of its pursuit of best quality control procedure in its facilities and its services. Therefore, it welcomes the customers’ auditors to randomly or determinately check our compliance with the contract requirements.
Furthermore, as mentioned before, all three of our facilities have been professionally designed and constructed to exceed the most rigid of international API standards. These facilities possess and operate API standard filtration processes as well as epoxy coated jet storages to enhance the quality of fuel and preventing it from contamination. Please refer to Appendix A of this proposal for a few pictures of our facilities.
GEE’s designated Project Manager, in cooperation with the QC Manager, personally oversees the quality control effort for any project. He/she is responsible for training, auditing and managing quality control procedures to make sure the QC checklists are followed during each working shift and in each delivery.
Moreover, to better assess the state of the quality of work and proficiency for a project performance, GEE develops specific metrics and user-defined business intelligence reports and track them using our state- of-the-art computer software application in MS Access database. Among other functions, we utilize the application for Quality Control as stated below:
Obtain metrics based reporting on process times for any given delivery vehicle
Automate email and internal notification when project specifications are not met
Use an empirical approach to track efficiency trends, gains and losses
Reports are generated on demand or as part of pre-defined QC schedule
Reports can be printed to share with the customers
Reports are exported to Excel for further QC analysis
Refinery Fuel Testing Certificates
The fuel we purchase is predominantly imported from Central Asia. Every batch of fuel purchased is issued the sample testing certification documents, which we share with the customer.
Remedy Process for Defective/Rejected Fuel Delivery
GEE has an all-encompassing procedure in the adherence of its commitment to service and quality. However; we understand that the situation in Afghanistan and unexpected human error can occasionally cause a sub-standard delivery. Whether the delivery defect is late delivery, incorrect quantity, wrong type of fuel, substandard quality or anything else, we have a process for the remedy of a fuel delivery being rejected regardless of the reason, as outlined step by step below:
Upon recognizing or being contacted regarding a specific delivery having been defective or rejected, GEE management’s priority is to find out what is the defect in detail, so that an appropriate action is taken.
We give ourselves a 24-hour window of time to fix any issue, so we move fast. As soon as the cause is determined, the Project Manager orders a new emergency delivery to take place.
The delivery apparatus is instructed to double-check for the same issue not being repeated when the second attempt is made, so that it is free of any issue or mistake.
Having been in the business for years and having the connection and affiliations with other companies in every region of Afghanistan gives us the leverage to use them for any emergency supply, in the unlikely event of us not being able to make the order correct in the first place. This is to ensure that the delivery is made and the problem is fixed within no more than 24 hours of us getting contacted about the rejection of the original delivery.
The Project Manager in coordination with the Quality Control Manager are also responsible for finding the root cause of the issue at hand and putting up the right processes to ensure the issue doesn’t occur in the future.
