Niels Prebensen recently finished his work placement in Bangkok. It turned out to be very exciting, highly educational and extremely wet.
Niels, ‘One of my father’s contacts landed me a job with Tropical Focus. The company is a supplier of energy-efficient solutions for air conditioning plants, and it has 300 employees in the Philippines. They recently opened a branch in Bangkok, where we were three employees. This meant that I worked closely together with the managing director.’
Many and varied tasks
The company’s target audience is the owners of shopping malls and hotels of more than 30,000 square metres. Niels spent a lot of time in the field assisting customers. Other tasks involved the production of PR material, a business plan as well as a template for contractors on the handling of the air conditioning plants. In his job, Niels felt that he often benefitted from the knowledge and skills acquired during his Global Business Engineering studies. And he found it to be highly rewarding that he was actually capable of adding value to the company.
Low food budget and extensive flooding
In Bangkok it is customary for people to eat all their meals at restaurants. This was very convenient to Niels who could have three excellent meals a day for only DKK50. However, Niels also experienced tough conditions during this stay. Thailand was hit by flooding the size of Spain, which affected the company’s day-to-day operations. Niels, ‘It seemed surreal to experience such extensive flooding, and it affected our work greatly. The shopping malls of two important customers were flooded, which meant they didn’t really have the time to bother about air conditioning.’
Useful intercultural experience
‘I’ve now got an invaluable understanding of the business conditions in Asia and of how things work in a company,’ says Niels who finds these things to be the most important benefits from his work placement. He continues, ‘I discovered that procedures must be described in detail and to a degree that seems exaggerated in order to make things work. He also experienced that his young age and fair skin made it difficult for him to get the respect of the locals. However, Niels finds the air conditioning business so interesting that he dreams of opening a subsidiary company of Tropical Focus in Vietnam or Malaysia sometime in the future.