Pau Kiew Huai
BINTULU: Local engineers and technicians must have the motivation to take on some challenges by going beyond the technical limits of engineering to help solve the problems here.
The Upskilling Sarawak Engineers and Technicians (USET) taskforce chairman Pau Kiew Huai said now with new challenges, engineers and technicians need to think of innovative ways to do things correctly.
He said this during the Institution of Engineers, Malaysia (IEM) conference on plant reliability at Kidurong Club on Tuesday.
He said this is where the taskforce comes in to help in the capability building of engineers and technicians in Sarawak to cope with modern world and the challenge of new technologies.
Pau who is also Malaysia LNG (MLNG) chief executive officer said the taskforce was initiated by Institute of Materials Malaysia (IMM) together with local oil and gas industry players.
“We see the need in technical upskilling of these technicians and engineers, to help cope with the pressures from the industries.
“For MLNG we feel that over the years the requirements and expectations on MLNG, management of engineer has been increasing…the pressure from the development and advancement of technology has put us under a challenging mode,” he added.
According to Pau, when the Shell company discovered oil in the Canada Hill in Miri in 1910, that actually was the birth of the real engineering needs in Sarawak.
He said the demand for highly qualified and competent technicians and engineers rose over the years and he believed the two professions have a brighter future in Sarawak.
However he said locals must be prepared for the challenges, otherwise everything will be done by foreign workforce.
“In USET we realised that we all face the same problem, we have many engineers, but a lot of them knowledgeable up here, may not be willing and sometimes lack courage to translate them into action in the work piece, they don’t want to put their ideas into work practice, but instead seek consultancy services from foreigners. This is really the starting point of USET,” said Pau.
He also hoped engineers and technicians from the heavy metal industries from Samalaju Industrial Park will join the taskforce in the future.
Although the industries in Samalaju was not directly linked to oil and gas but more to heavy metals, Pau believed that the technical challenges faced by their engineers are more severe than in oil and gas industry.
USET he said has several focus areas and the joint integrity is one of the biggest challenges to plant owners, engineers, technicans, and contractors.
Other focus areas are materials (corrosion prevention, coatings, insulation), welder certification, scaffolding, electrical power system (switchgear and transformer maintenance) and civil structure (online and flare stack maintenance).
“Maybe next year we will look into environmental protection issues by taking precautionary measures before things happened, that is our focus in the future,” Pau added.
He thus urged all engineers and technicians to join the taskforce as it is the best platform for them to find solutions to their engineering problems.
He said they will try to organise a similar conference every year in collaboration with IMM and Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM) Bintulu region.