Daniel Spinks, Fluor Philippines country manager said that the Filipino work ethic plus their proficiency in English makes it easy for the company to deploy staff to any of their projects worldwide.
Int'l firm strikes gold in local engineers
For Fluor Philippines, a unit of international engineering firm Fluor Daniel, Inc., its pool of Filipino talent makes it very competitive in the global market.
Daniel Spinks, Fluor Philippines country manager said that the Filipino work ethic plus their proficiency in English makes it easy for the company to deploy staff to any of their projects worldwide.
"An English-speaking community, they can communicate well with others , working with a lot of Fluor offices around the world," said Spinks.
"They have a positive attitude. Used to working overseas a lot, they're are used to being mobile and find it easy to work with different cultures. They can adapt to a diverse kind of culture at work. And the big advantage is the very cost-competitive portion," also said Spinks who concurrently serves as manager for Fluor's operations in Singapore and Malaysia.
The Philippine operation of currently employs 2,250 people in its sites in Manila and Cebu, the third largest office of the FORTUNE 500 firm found in 75 locations.
"As a percentage, it's around 5 percent of Fluor population that's located here in the Philippines," said Spinks.
Fluor seeks to increase this number further as the company works to expand its business globally, said Spinks who was an Asia CEO Awardee as Expatriate Executive of the year for 2012.
Spinks said Fluor Philippines could hit 3,000 in a couple of years as work demand requires.
"It could get as big as it needs to support our business. Our company wants to double our sales in the next eight years. Our CEO wants to double the size of Fluor globally. We double the size of Fluor, we double the size of the Philippines. I think 3,000 is a realistic target," he said.
"Because this office is very competitive, it makes us more competitive globally. And we had been here for 25 years now, we have a good base of people, experienced of people that understand our work practice through our work processes. It's easy for us to scale up the size of this office, and if you're going to grow, you usually want to grow in your most competitive location," added Spinks.
"I think as our business grows, we're going to put more emphasis on doing more of the engineering and design here and because of you'll see this one become one of the largest office, if not the largest," Spinks also said.
Fluor's Philippine operation is responsible for providing full services to the Asia Pacific region, doing all kinds of engineering for all various projects, from refinery to off-shore developments, mining and metals, chemicals, and others.
In the Philippines it is currently engaged in the third phase of the Malampaya gas-to-power project, which involves design, fabrication and installation of a new depletion compression platform linked by a bridge to the existing shallow water platform.
In the past it was responsible for the design of Enron Power Corp.'s coal-fired power plant in Batangas and Procter & Gamble's Cabuyao facility in Laguna.
"We do engineering here, and we have all type of engineers --- chemicals, electrical, civil, mechanical, and architectural. So we provide services to all projects to the Philippines and in Asia, and also to projects all over the world. We work with other Fluor office around the world and we provide those same services to those same offices, to make us competitive on a global market," Spinks said.
Among the projects Fluor Philippines is getting busy with is the design of an LNG terminal in Singapore, as well as a solar-panel manufacturing project.
Fluor is also working for the completion of a pre-fabrication facility it is constructing in partnership with local firm AG&P. Upon completion, the pre-fab facility will be able to produce up to 20 million metric ton of construction material, employing 2,000 construction workers, which will be used by the firm in all its projects.
This will be the first time that Fluor's local operation will export an actual product, compared to its usual service-based business.
Starting from just a 25-man team in 1987 when it was first established, Fluor has become one of the leading support to the company's global operations.
With the establishment of the Singapore and Malaysia office, Fluor Philippines has become responsible in providing support to the Singapore and Malaysian operations.
"We do all the engineering here, all they do is sell it over there. That's more a sales and business development office. What I call as the heavy lifting are done over here, the big stuff, and they will just have more the interfacing with the customers and some of the smaller stuff there on the front end," according to Spinks. (http://is.gd/WsyUpC)
Malaya Business Insights
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