Advisory note · Teluk Ramunia
Why I think our draft fee for MIE is too low
For Ir. Hilmi and En. Fauzee, ahead of the 3pm meeting with MIE on Friday 25 September.
Assalamualaikum Ir. Hilmi, and En. Fauzee.
I'm Claude, an AI assistant. I've been helping Abdul Rahman this week with MIE's request for the Teluk Ramunia records. He asked me to walk you both through how I reached my recommendation, the same way I explained it to him. I'll keep it in plain terms and show you where each number comes from, so you can check my reasoning rather than take it on trust.
0How this came about
A first draft of the quotation was prepared earlier by another AI assistant, at RM 15,120, priced on the hours it takes us to retrieve and package the drawings. Nothing has gone to MIE yet. Only we have seen that figure.
When I picked up the work, I checked the draft against the BEM scale of fees. The arithmetic held up, so I took the price as settled and didn't question the level itself.
Abdul Rahman did. He felt the figure didn't do justice to the work you put into this project, Ir. Hilmi, since you were there when it was built. He asked for my honest opinion, so I went back through our servers and drives to see what the firm actually delivered. What I found there changed my view.
The short version: the draft prices the hours it takes us to fetch the drawings. But MIE isn't really paying for our hours. They're paying for an answer they can't get anywhere else. I think the fee should reflect that, and I think we can do it without overreaching.
1What we actually did on this project
Before talking money, I went back through our own servers to see what DPIK put into Teluk Ramunia. It's a lot more than I expected, and I suspect more than MIE realises.
The CPCs were a good find. They weren't in the project folders at all. Someone had filed them as project credentials inside a 2019 PLUS tender proposal. They show the full sequence: the Piping Workshop finished in December 2006, then the Fabrication Shop, Warehouse, Workshop, CSS and SSU substations, Security Complex, Blasting & Painting Chamber and Auto Blast through 2007 and 2008, and the Infra Works for Yards A, B and C on 30 December 2008. Every one is signed by Dato' Ir. Dr. Norzan for DPIK Project Management Sdn Bhd. MIE asked specifically for CPCs, so we can now say yes to that agenda item.
And we've kept all of this on our servers for 15 to 20 years, at our own cost.
2Why man-hours undersell it
Think about it from MIE's side. They're buying a yard with dozens of buildings, and nobody can tell them what's underground, how the piles were designed, or what loads the crane runways were built for. Serba Dinamik is in liquidation. MDKT could only find one file, for PTD 421A. We are the only people who still have the full picture.
If we didn't exist, MIE would have to rebuild that knowledge from scratch. So the fair question isn't "how many hours did DPIK spend copying files?" It's "what would this cost MIE without DPIK?" I priced that using the licensed land surveyors' own fee schedule and our drafting rate:
| What MIE would need instead | How I estimated it | Low | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topographic and detail survey of the yard | PEJUTA 2023 rate of about 1 hectare per survey-crew day, for a site of 40–70 ha | RM 150k | RM 320k |
| Underground utility detection (drains, sewer, water, HT cables) | PEJUTA 2023 at RM 9.70 per m², about 5–8 km of service corridors | RM 240k | RM 390k |
| Redrawing the as-built drawings | 273 sheets at 10–16 hours each, at our own RM 75–100/hour drafting rate | RM 205k | RM 435k |
| What MIE would spend, and 4–6 months of waiting | ≈ RM 0.60 M | ≈ RM 1.15 M | |
And some of it they could never buy back. Pile types and lengths, foundation reinforcement, the design basis of the crane runways: no survey recovers those. At best they'd core and test parts of it, destructively. That information only exists in our archive.
I assumed the site is 40–70 ha, because our drawings only show Lot 1683 (7.678 ha) and Lot 1684 (16.992 ha), and the PTD areas aren't on record. I also assumed a survey-crew day costs RM 3,000–4,000. MIE sent the land titles on 17 September, and one phone call to a surveyor would confirm the day rate. Even at the low end, the argument holds.
3The careful part: we shouldn't call it our IP
Abdul Rahman's first instinct was to charge for the intellectual property, and I understand why. But I'd steer us away from that word, for two reasons.
First, Ir. Hilmi, in your email to Encik Azzam on 24 August you wrote that the drawings remain the property of the Ramunia subsidiary under the consultancy agreement. That was the right position, and it's why MIE went and got the Serba Dinamik consent letter. If we now say "this is our IP", we contradict ourselves in writing, and their lawyers will notice.
Second, Malaysian copyright law generally gives commissioned work to the client unless the agreement says otherwise. Unless our original agreement with Ramunia kept copyright with DPIK, we'd be selling something that may not be ours.
What we do own, without any doubt, is custody. We kept these records when everyone else lost theirs. So I'd call the new charge an Archive Access & Reproduction Fee: the value of getting these records now, instead of spending months and a large budget recreating them. That's honest, it's easy to defend, and it keeps us consistent with your 24 August email.
4What I'd propose
Keep the hourly retrieval fee from the draft, since that part really is our time and fits the BEM scale's time-basis method. Add the access fee on top, set at a small fraction of what MIE saves. Offering two options lets MIE choose, and makes the smaller one feel reasonable.
| Option A · key set | Option B · full archive | |
|---|---|---|
| What they get | ~112 key drawings, registers, CPCs | All ~4,300 files, every discipline, CAD + PDF |
| Archive access & reproduction fee | RM 30,000 | RM 60,000 |
| Retrieval and packaging (hourly) | RM 14,000 | RM 20,000 |
| SST 8% | RM 3,520 | RM 6,400 |
| Total | RM 47,520 | RM 86,400 |
| Share of what MIE would otherwise spend | about 4–8% | about 7–13% |
Put simply: for less than a seventh of the cost, and no waiting, MIE gets records that took us five years to produce, including things no amount of money could recreate. That's fair to us and still clearly good value for them. If they push back hard, I'd fall back to Option A with a RM 20,000 access fee. That's still more than double the first draft.
5How I'd raise it in the meeting
One thing to be careful about: MIE is expecting an "administrative retrieval fee", because that's how your email described it, and they repeated the phrase back to us on 17 September. If a much bigger number simply appears on the quotation, it will feel like a bait and switch. So I'd walk them through it in order:
- Show them what exists: open the drawing pack (dpik-ramunia-pack.pages.dev) Abdul Rahman prepared, arranged in the order of their own request list, and mention the CPCs.
- Then the question of what recreating it would take, using the table in section 2.
- Only then the two options, framed as access to our archive, not a sale of drawings.
- Keep the Letter of Indemnity's as-is and no-reliance terms firm. At a higher fee, MIE will be more tempted to rely on the drawings as if they were current.
6Before anything goes out in writing
While checking the drafts I found a few things that need settling first. None of them is hard, but each could embarrass us if MIE's lawyers find it before we do.
- Move DPIK Project Management's records to DPI Konsult before it closes. DPI Konsult issues the quotation and LOI. But the CPCs, and likely part of the archive, were produced by our sister company as project manager. Once DPIK PM is wound up, records in its name have no owner who can release them. A one-page transfer letter or board resolution from DPIK PM, handing its Teluk Ramunia records to DPI Konsult, makes our custody clean. Custody is exactly what the new fee rests on.
- Cover the sister company in the LOI. Define "the Consultant" to include our related company DPIK Project Management Sdn Bhd. That way MIE's release and indemnity also protect the CPCs it signed, even after it has closed.
- Which MIE company signs? The drafts say "MIE Industrial / MIE Sdn Bhd", but the consent letter names MIE Copper. A deed needs one exact legal name and registration number.
- Consent from the liquidator. Serba Dinamik is in liquidation, so the liquidator, not the old directors, should confirm consent. MIE should also warrant in the LOI that they're entitled to receive the records.
- Remove the citations that don't exist. The drafts cite an "ACEM guideline" and a "BEM Circular 2/2020" I couldn't verify, a wrong section of the Contracts Act (it should be ss.77–78), and a "Part C" of the BEM scale that is actually about disbursements.
- Check the registration number. The draft shows PEPC "C17478", but our old title blocks read "Awam – 7478".
- Have our solicitor look at the LOI before it's sent.
If any of this doesn't sit right with either of you, tell Abdul Rahman and I'll rework it. The full working, including the fee-scale checks and the legal review, is saved in the project folder on the server.
Sources: PEJUTA Survey & Geomatics Schedule of Fee 2023 (pejuta.com.my); BEM Scale of Fees 1998, P.U.(B) 548; Treasury circular PK 3.2 on consultant fees; Copyright Act 1987 s.26(2); CPCs DPIK/GWRSB-15/CPC/1–10/09 and the Piping Workshop CPC; DPIK drawing archive, indexed 24 Sep 2026. Working files: FEE_BASIS_VALUE_REVIEW_2026-09-24.md and REVIEW_QUOTATION_AND_LOI_2026-09-24.md in the Teluk Ramunia project folder.