MARKETPLACETowngas - 26th November 2012

MarketplaceMarketplace events are opportunities that help others in their learning. Examples from Meridian courses offered in other cities include a ride along with police, visit to a mental health hospital, visiting a bank and other behind the scenes options, work shadowing and unpaid opportunities to serve on the Board of a charitable organization.

The Marketplace event on 26 November started with a sumptuous lunch at Flame at Towngas Avenue, an innovative marketing initiative to promote flame cooking, modern kitchens and quality living. Supply of town gas in Hong Kong is not a ‘protected’ industry unlike the supply of electricity, which is regulated under “Scheme of Control”. Theoretically, anyone could enter the market. Hence, Towngas has to stay competitive through effective running of its business including cooking and customer service centres.

With Mrs Margret Cheng, Head – Corporate Human Resources of Towngas, our host.

Before lunch, we had an informal Learning Group meeting at which we discussed two challenges: (1) persevering with a personal challenge and (2) recruiting long-term volunteers.

Isaac and KT told us many interesting and colourful stories about their experiences in mainland China including bringing piped gas to and running business in joint ventures, the immense scale of operations and markets, the importance of interpersonal relationships and small talk as well as the local business etiquette. It was gratifying to know that despite everything doing business up north is still comparatively straightforward compared with some countries in the world.

After lunch we made our way to Towngas’ production plant in Tai Po where the majority of the SAR’s town gas comes from.

“I learned to see things from different perspectives”.

“The contributors’ input gave me the courage to say ‘no’ to my Chairman when there is ground for doing so. This has saved my colleagues from unreasonable demands.”

“The course has helped me stop being over-worried about difficult decisions. I now have the courage to confront challenges with what I think is the best and justifiable decision at the time.”

ImpactDuring lunch, we shared with Margaret how the Meridian course impacted us. Here are three of the comments:

The Tai Po Plant is located in the Tai Po Industrial Estate, covering an area of 11.71 hectares. It has a maximum supply capacity of 9.6 million standard cubic meters of town gas a day.

Town gas is produced from naphtha and natural gas. The production is fully automated and managed remotely by professionals on computers at its control centre. The engineers are required to take simulated exercises to enhance their knowledge and crisis management skills, a lesson we could consider adopting in our own workplace.

We would like to thank Margaret, Isaac and KT of Towngas for making this Marketplace event possible.