INTERVIEW GARY GILL BANGKOK Postcard from... Gary Gill is Regional Director Asia at EEC WSP in Bangkok


What are you working on at the moment?


We’re working on a huge range of jobs. We have been designing a 91-storey condominium and various hotel projects, hospital extensions and retail projects, and we’re involved in the new Australian embassy in Bangkok, in association with our Sydney office.


We also undertake light industrial, combined cycle power generation, mass transit and commercial office projects. Approximately half our work is overseas in Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia, and we are finishing some projects in Vietnam too.


What are your plans for the next few years?


We want to keep growing and, in particular, build our civil and structural engineering services up a lot more. I came from Australia to start the office 21 years ago as part of Lincolne Scott, which was a purely M&E company. Recently we were the first office to start offering civil and structural engineering services. Now they account for about 15-20% of our business and this share is growing. We also have a specialist lighting division, Vision Design Studio.


We would like to further diversify away from buildings into infrastructure, power generation and mass transit, which tend to be more recession-proof. In the past, we were quite strong in these


sectors. We previously worked on an 110MW combined cycle power station south of Bangkok, interfacing to the grid at 115kV. WSP has a lot of expertise in power generation in Europe so we’d like to further develop this market with our colleagues there.


What about the EEC part of the company name?


To be an engineering company in Thailand, you need to be a joint venture. EEC is our local partner and we have a very close personal relationship with them, of which we are very proud. We’ve known them for many, many years and we’re based in the same building. When I first came here, we brought specialist MEP services to the joint venture. Since then, we have focused on the foreign expatriate market, offering full services, and have been very successful.


What’s it like working in Thailand?


We’ve had some swings and roundabouts – the Asian economic crisis in 1997, the world economic crisis and local political problems. Thai society is tolerant and enjoyable but, as with anywhere, you must treat it with the respect it is due. A key to our success is combining the best of eastern and western cultures.


I learned to read and write the Thai language more than 14 years


ago by going to school at 7am every morning for an hour and a half, six days a week for a year. It’s totally different to English – the sentence structure is completely different, there are 44 consonants and 32 vowels – so you just have to open your mind. If you speak to people in Thai, they appreciate it. It shows you’ve make the effort to integrate into their society.


What’s a typical day like for you?


It varies, it’s mainly reactive to what’s required. I currently do a lot of travelling overseas – I just came back from Bangladesh last week. In our office, we have a fantastic group of people, a great loyal team, and we hope to employ 90 staff by the end of this year.


gary.gill@eecwsp.co.th


SOLUTIONS JULY 2012


Sathorn Square, Bangkok

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