Coordination

BLOG

Jakarta 12th October 2011

While waiting to take my flight back to Singapore I have some time to reflect back on my stay in Jakarta. Observation one: I spent nearly a third of my (working) time in a car trying to beat the traffic jams and reach my various destinations. The irregular driving and bad road conditions makes it nearly impossible to work (at least I can’t) but travelling with my Jakarta partner made it at least a well spent time allowing us to chat and catch up on our business and projects together.

The main reason for my trip to Jakarta was to consolidate the lightig design for the mock up room for our Bali resort project. The complication in this project is that we have a mix of international and local consultants and joint ventures with different company principals and design directors. We have interior and lighting design head offices for this project based in Singapore with each of them having a local affiliate for the day to day management and follow up in Jakarta, with the actual project (and local contractors) being in Bali. On top of that an operator based out of Dubai. As a result we have local coordination in Bali, local coordination in Jakarta and local coordination in Singapore. The head offices Singapore and Bali coordinate with their respective counterparts in Jakarta and as a result some details and issues get lost in translation. Seldom do we sit all together in the same room, so this coordination meeting was a great occasion to coordinate all design matters with everyone present and able to comment directly. It goes without saying that with everyone well prepared for their presentations, we managed to get much ground covered and decision made for the progress of the project. We do use teleconferencing as a meeting tool at times, but nothing beats the personal face to face touch….

PS: The flight was delayed and by the time I got back in Singapore I didn’t feel like starting up my laptop again….

In Light Watch today a look of some of the guestrooms we designed the lighting for over the years, Kempinski, Marina Mandarin, Grand Hyat, Oriental Hotels. It is interesting to see how interior and lighting design are intergrated. One can not exist without the other!