The week that was 18-22nd January 2016

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The week that was 18-22nd January 2016

Singapore – Bangkok – Guilin – Hong Kong – Singapore,
Weekend 23-24 January 2016

Travel
Back to my old habits this week with a lot of travel, though for one project only, our beloved hotel in the Guilin Mountains. While the site is famous (notably figuring on the back of the 20 Yuan bank note), scenic and beautiful, the travel to get there is rather daunting. As winter is traditionally a low season there there are only a few flights a week and the connectivity from Singapore is practically nil. The best route is generally via Hong Kong but the meeting dates (who choose these dates???) are such that alternative travel routes had to be found. We decided on a flight via Bangkok with a stop-over in Nanning as the quickest route to reach Guilin. It worked out quite ok. The return however is still ongoing as I write the blog. We had worked out a flight via Hong Kong but while the most direct route, there was a caveat; the transfer time in Hong Kong was officially only 50 mins. The flight left Guilin well on time with an initial arrival time projected of 10 mins ahead of schedule…as we were about to start our descend into Hong Kong however the captain announced that due to traffic congestion the landing would be delayed and we remained in a holding pattern for about 20 mins before finally landing 15 mins behind schedule leaving us only 35 mins to transfer. To compound the misery the plane was parked at a remote bay, where we had to wait another 10 mins for the bus. Add to that the fact that the plane for some reason had a whole bunch of elder people who could not really walk and had to be carried out of the plane and put in a wheelchair and you get the picture…we did not make it…I am now looking at nearly 6 hours waiting (luckily in the lounge) for our overnight flight back to Singapore…oh well look at the bright side, at least I can get some work done…and in the comfort of warmth as it was bloody cold on site with only some coal fires to heat up our site office J
Project commiserations
Dealing with Asians in general and with Chinese in particular is always a challenge and with never a dull moment to put it nicely. Communication and cultural differences seems to be the general frustration and even though I have been around in this part of the world for more than 25 years it never ceases to amaze me, how seemingly simple issues can be blown totally out of proportions. Let me share some of the commiserations with you. We had heard through separate channels that the client was not happy about us because he had been told by his M&E consultant (after going through our documents with the help of “someone”) that our drawings were not up to date, missing details and full of mistakes! Now that is a serious allegation, which I took very seriously knowing that our documents were coordinated and checked with the interior designer, architect and operator before issuance. Not only that, in a special WECHAT group used by the team to discuss or clarify issues, the perfect platform to clarify anything that may be bothering the rest of the team, nothing was raised and all said to be ok, so the feedback was obviously a big surprise. Confronting client and M&E consultant on site we found out several things; the M&E consultant had consulted with a lighting control supplier considered for the supply and ostensibly at the source of the negative report on our documents. Rather than bringing this up with us he chose to relay this to the client. The reality however became more evident, the M&E consultant, under pressure of time, was looking for excuses (and time) by blaming it on poor documentation by us. However on site clarification and verification by the complete team cleared us from any “wrongdoing” and put the ball clearly back in his court. After we talked it through the hatchet (for now?) was buried and the episode relegated to “cultural differences” and “misunderstanding”. In my opinion however it is incompetence, lack of experience and poor professional attitude but of course I cannot say that out loud. Cultural differences may also brought about a fear to communicate directly with us (“foreigners”) with potential risk to lose face, who knows. Anyhow we are hopefully, and peacefully, back on track and look forward to completing this project successfully as we are all convinced it will be a cracker of a project!

The China way
Another issue that came out of this week in China relates to the way Chinese do business. Everything for a dollar, is how Chinese business attitude is often described and in our lighting business it is no different. Shortcuts to safe money happen on all levels and even for a mock up room where original equipment specifications are generally installed for reference, clients often start the chase for these elusive dollars right from the start. In this case however I have to say that the client is pretty good and the dollar saving chase (or the “more money in my pocket” approach for some) is actually lead by the contractor / supplier combination. While instructed by the client to be as cost effective as possible they not surprisingly interpreted that as being as cheap as possible. The result was the installation of blatant copies of the original. With two mock up rooms up for review they tried their luck by installing the absolute worst in the first one to see if we would accept that! No real photo metric data available other then a poor, self-made, black and white, hardly readable paper copy with some image supposed to resemble the downlight, yet they claim that all our performance specifications are met. With our colour spectrum meter we could however quickly debunk most of the claims and reject the fixtures outright. Typically a class C type of fitting (C for Cheap and Copy).The second room was a bit of a different story though and reinforced what I have been observing over the last 1-2 years…the Chinese are getting damn good at copying! And I don’t mean copying the looks, no I mean copying the performance. While till now copies were done to match the look with the guts being the cheapest of cheap, there is a definite reverse trend going on. The “guts” and with that I mean optical quality, LED chip quality, binning (!), colour consistency, basically the quality of the lighting performance are starting to give the established manufacturers a run for their money. Not surprisingly they have picked up on the fact that lighting performance is more critical than the looks and buoyed by the fact that many of the leading manufacturers OEM their fittings in China, have found ways to replicate (and improve!) on the lighting quality. The downlight I found were of excellent quality, with well controlled clean optical beams and LED binning tolerances well within 3 Mc Adams! And here is the knock out…all that for less than half the price! The morale is the China way has changed. We can no longer say that (all) Chinese products are poor copies of poor quality. The reality is they are catching up and fast. I think the LED revolution has changed the lighting industry playing field completely. Everybody, designers and traditional manufacturers have to re-invent themselves to remain relevant!

Have a great weekend!