He has been in charge of planning, construction and procurement for overseas projects for about 30 years. He previously served as the chief of JGC Corporation's electrical department, as well as the president of JGC in the Philippines. Including his time at overseas planning subsidiaries, he has worked on management for about 10 years.
"Understanding local cultures is the key to success in foreign projects."
He has been constantly engaged in electrical design. His electrical design. His also encompasses procurement and execution management. He speaks English and Swahili.
"I spend every minute of my free time playing golf. The company has a golf society, as well as bi-annual (spring and autumn) golf tournaments and so on. Golf has allowed me to meet a lot of people of the company, so it's a lot of fun. How good am I? Well… That's a secret!"
Marume: "Mr. Haginoya, you have many years of experience with overseas work, don't you?"
Haginoya: "That's right. Almost all of the projects I have been involved in have been overseas jobs. When you're working overseas, the people you're working with are local, and if you don't understand their culture, planning is impossible. Planning is not just a matter of technology; understanding the local culture is also vitally important for planning."
── What have you learned from your seniors?
Marume: "From working with seniors, I have learned about the standards according to which I should achieve my work, have gained theoretical knowledge, have learned how to draw up documents in both Japanese and English, and have had business meetings with relevant people and so on. These things have really been instructive and informative, and I will continue to make the best possible use of them in my work. I also would like to continue to learn my seniors' skills and expertise by stealth.
Haginoya: "Instead of learning from your seniors, do you have any way to learn such things in a shorter space of time?"
Marume: "Nowadays senior employees provide us with PCs and on-line databases. The speed in our doing jobs has really increased. But such on-line databasese alone are not sufficient for us to completely understand things. Sometimes we would like to have face-to-face explanations from our seniors."
── Engineers
Haginoya: "It is essential that engineers know about cost as well as technology. Not only economic knowledge, but also about the knack of how to exercise control over work execution is also needed.
Things of this kind are really difficult to learn in a classroom; they can only be acquired on an OJT basis. That is, as engineers encounter various situations whilst actually working, they should never fail to try to work out how best to deal with them."
