INGENIEUR
energy facilities like Combined Heat and Power,
District Cooling Systems, District Heating Systems,
etc.
Implementing ESTI need not be rocket
science. It all begins with housekeeping. It can be
as simple as calibrating measuring devices and
related controls which have been left unattended
since day one; realignment and rearrangement
of operating regimes to achieve better balance
in energy efficiency and less wastage in the
production process; or proper record keeping and
paper work for analysis.
One need only be disciplined in daily
housekeeping and keeping proper records.
Incremental improvements related to international
best practices, including environmental
benchmarks, will ensure enhanced asset values.
Very often, basic housekeeping tasks are lacking
especially in the operation and management of
public assets and facilities.
It has often been said that Malaysia is good
at developing first world assets, perhaps because
Malaysia has been fortunate in raising the capital
for the development. But when it comes to
maintenance and repairs, we have a third world
mentality. For ESTI to be effective, we need to
have in place the “3T’s”:
● Talent
● Technology
● Tolerance
The first “T”, Talent, is defined as “a natural
person or people collectively, with the knowledge,
experience, skills, superior ability in the arts or
sciences or in the learning or doing of anything. The
ability is either endowed, or more often than not
cultivated”. Talent equates to knowledge-workers
in the 21 st century commercially interconnected in
real-time in the global market place dealing with
the K-economy and driven by Industrial Revolution
4.0 (IR4) technologies.
Brainpower counts in circumstances of
globalisation and services trade liberalisation
wherein competition will be on a “no quarter given
nor asked basis”. And in Malaysia when we talk of
Talent, we cannot ignore the various aspects that
result in “brain-drain”, and the repeated failures to
achieve “brain-gain”.
As to the 2nd “T”, Technology, it should be
home-grown or in-country innovated technologies
and not purely procured technologies — the
maintenance and troubleshooting of which are
still (very much) vendor dependent. That means to
say, the acquisition and utilisation of technology
should not have gaps in the supply chain. We must
be mindful of technology fundamentals.
Technologies may be procured – as per
the Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese
models – which have demonstrated that procured
technologies can be localised, further innovated
and advanced by domestic talents to the extent
that they are now in a position to, in-turn, export
state-of-the-art technologies. A study of the said
models shows that much attention and effort have
been invested in the operation and management
of assets, and facilities maintenance, repairs and
improvements.
Therefore, asset management O&M (or ROM)
engineering services – forming a part of integrated
engineering services, or otherwise ESTI services,
is one of the few possible sources of domestically
innovated and advanced technologies, provided
the right talents are engaged in the acquisition
process. This approach will float up the state
of technical preparedness and readiness of a
nation or an economy. For effective technology
transfer there must be in place both the willing
“transmitter” and the keen “receiver”.
It is all a question of the right type of human
resource; we must have an ESTI qualified human
resource “bank” to ensure orderly adoption, fluid
adaptation and guarantee further development of
relevant technology. We cannot afford to continue
to be mere consumers of technologies.
The third “T”, Tolerance, is understood as the
“freedom from bigotry or prejudice, especially of
view, beliefs, practices, etc. of others that differ
from one’s own”. How does Malaysia score in that
direction? Are the approaches of the young, the
forward-looking, the liberals, the progressive, the
advanced, and the talented suppressed? Many of
them have spoken of the problems faced by the
nation concerning the issues of “brain-drain” and
the failed attempts at “brain gain”. We need to be
more inclusive.
Enterprises committed to corporate
environmentalism should have within their
policies, a corporate Environmental Management
System (EMS) aligned with the UN’s SDGs. It
should take into consideration social cost — a
commonly overlooked cost. Bankers’ financing
54 VOL 81 JANUARY-MARCH 2020