Early career engineers from Asia, Africa and Latin America share their challenges and triumphs on the job.

Henry Wong

I work for Amtek Engineering Limited. Amtek mainly produces stamped metal parts, while providing value added services from prototyping, analysis, tooling, production and product design. We are a global company that conducts business in North America, Central Europe, China and Asia and on a regular basis participates in activities that benefit social welfare. I started working for Amtek this year as Senior Product Engineer designing products, as I was seeking exposure and experience in a new environment.

My job, besides design and project management requires me to provide direct support to customers. My work challenges include achieving a workable concept, which is suitable for manufacturing, meeting consumer demands and the abililty to anticipate manufacturing and functionality while providing contingencies. I have a mentor that provides me with opportunity and insight to the higher levels of management.

My career plans for the future are to build up personal capability, take on roles of responsibility and mentor the next generation.

Carlos Alberto Mata

I work for Landmark Halliburton in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as a Porduction Operations consultant. Landmark is part of the Halliburton Company, focusing on integrated software for enhancing the profitability of oil and gas production assets. This oil services company serves in areas such as exploration, reservoir management, drilling, production, business-decision analysis and data management.

It brings solutions to companies around the world, in any country and environment. I am actually a newbie in the company. Although I started July 1, I feel I have made considerable contributions. The company allows you to design your own career path developing a solid knowledge base through a learning-by-doing approach, in conjunction with the training courses, mentoring and knowledge management techniques.

I looked forward to working for this company because of the new projects that are being developed. For example, a recent project was one of the first times a large scale integrated production optimization solution was implemented on an offshore asset. Putting the information and workflow of every area involved in the oil production is a challenge that requires a solid knowledge base. I am working on the area of the project that relates to engineering. My previous experience is limited and there is a steep learning curve to tackle moving ahead. Currently, we are identifying and organizing all the production Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and presenting them in the system interfaces. We hold constant communication and make interviews with the client to ensure what is being implemented is what they need, according to their overall workflow.

My two personal challenges here are to have visibility of the overall concept being implemented, and to start learning the basics of all the future components of the project.

In the beginning, the workload was relatively low to allow for adaptation and learning the key elements of the project to be developed. Once I gained a better understanding of it, deliverables started to become my main objective. I have been kind of busy, including working on some weekends. The project is being developed in Houston and Rio de Janeiro, with international staff. We work with people from Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, USA, Malaysia and India, in three different languages, with Portuguese and English being the official ones. 

I have a mentor in the company whom I will try to emulate in the future. Luigi Saputelli, electronic engineer, with postgraduate studies in petroleum engineering and a PhD in chemical engineering, has contributed so much to this area of the business through his SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) papers that he became a very well known personality in the industry. I keep communication with him via email, indicating what I have done. He recommends what I should do outside of my normal office to gather the required skill set for success in the business.

Success for me is to enjoy what you do and feel it as a fulfilling experience. Work is not only the know-how used to tackle problems. It is also about networking. This may locate you in places where you can give the best of yourself. My objective for success is a broader scope of vision, so I want to dive into different cultural environments and develop a global mindset.

I expect to become a project manager in a few years and take new challenging business opportunities overseas anywhere in the world. I started in Venezuela, my home country, on an internship for ExxonMobil, and traveled to Brazil as a step forward for internationalization. After Brazil, my vision is to work in Asia and the Middle East, so I am learning some Chinese now.

Afaq Shah

I work for Pakistan Air Force, a defense setup assigned with the role to protect the aerial territories of Pakistan and assist the Pakistan Army providing peace to people living inside the territories. I have worked six years for the Pakistan Air Force as my due share in return to what my country has paid so far for me. I work in the Logistics department. My main role in peace is to provide all related material support to the maintenance and flying branch in order to keep them fit and ready for the aerial defense of the nation.

A great deal of mentoring is required in my department to counter last minute challenges we face in providing support services. Any delay in our mission may result in our operational tasks having a complete failure in the end.

My six years of experience has given me a true mental strength to be ready for last minute challenging tasks. And professionals distinguish them from the rest as they do not fail to react whenever they are required to identify solutions to the problems which remain unresolved at the operating levels. My service has matured enough to enable me to handle my role in my assigned tasks more confidently than before. I will keep striving to reach perfection in my profession. For that, I may travel around the globe.

Richard Otu Anaafi

I work with Toyota Ghana Company Limited. Toyota Ghana is the leading vehicle sales company in Ghana and has won many awards in Africa. Just this year we had the best sales and customer services awards from South Africa and one in Ghana.

Toyota is a global company which has given franchise to individuals or groups internationally as dealers. Toyota Ghana reports to Toyota Motor Cooperation owned by Marubeni in Japan. The chief executive of Toyota Ghana is Japanese, Masato Kimata. Currently the Company has three branches in Ghana and has authorized certain local automobile workshops in other parts of the country where there are no branches to service Toyota Vehicles with Toyota genuine parts obtained from Toyota Ghana.

Toyota Ghana services about 15,000 vehicles in a year and sells between 1000-1500 vehicles in a year. Our customer service is one of the best in Ghana and we give all cars bought from the Company a warranty period of three years or 100,000km (whichever comes first).

I started working with Toyota Ghana March 2007 and I chose to work with them because I believe it is the best automobile company in Ghana and it treats its staff better that other automobile firms. I entered Toyota as an Automobile Technician but I was later assigned to monitor daily cash and credit sales, and prepare credit applications for the workshop customers. My daily work load varies in relation to the day's problems. It is sometimes very hectic because I could be called upon to sit in for an absent staff member in the workshop reception or job control areas. I attend workshop meetings on Mondays and Thursdays after work.

Some of my challenges as an engineer are:

• Getting access to further my education to reach international standard and also work with very modern equipment.
• To get sponsorship for international conferences.
• To blend the workshop practice (automobile engineering) and office work.

I have not been able to triumph over any of the challenges but I hope to get over the first and last challenges soon. I will accomplish this by working very hard to gather my finances to support my education.

I decided to become an engineer by showing interest in engineering at a young age. I enjoyed dismantling digital and analog watches, radios and other related gadgets. As I grew up my interest was to know more about engineering and always yearning to understand the concept of engineering. 

My plans for the future are to further my education to became one of the greatest engineers in the world and to work with some of the greatest engineering companies like NASA ,GM, FORD, etc. However, it is also upon my heart to open the best engineering school in Ghana.