Andrés Martin CTO Chief Technology Officer UWI China at United Waters International
T
he first time I came to China was to build water supply projects in rural Tibetan communities with an NGO. Two years ago I had graduated from industrial engineering and I knew practically nothing about water tanks, pipes, pressure, flows, topographies, and so on. Obviously it was decided not to tell anyone and so I was presented as a super experienced water and sanitation engineer. My supposedly extended experience was most probably questioned during the implementation of the projects when people saw me running sweaty from water faucet to water faucet to make sure the pressure was fine in all parts of the town. As Penba, the Tibetan technical person responsible for directing the workers, told me once “Andres make sure your calculations are well done because I will build whatever you design, but if the calculations are not correct this will never work”. We probably couldn´t fool him too well. Anyway, you can imagine the pressure that kind of statement gives you, especially since at that same time I was thinking “If Penba knew I’ve done all the math by hand..”. It was then, while I was working in Tibet, that I started getting very interested in Chinese people. The interest that I had towards the Han Chinese was coming mainly from their sort of intriguing aura, I simply could not understand their
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behavior, and so I started studying Mandarin to see if that would help me understand better. After Tibet I left China for several years, always working and advancing my knowledge on water, and did not return until 2007, this time with a grant from “La Caixa” to study an MBA at CEIBS. During those 18 months finally I could get serious with my Mandarin, and I passed the level 3 on the HSK exam (the official mandarin examination), while at the same time learning the theory of how to do business and enjoying the delights of Shanghai and the “return to school “(with all due respect, if you have studied engineering in Spain, an MBA is like going back to secondary school). After the MBA I started working for an Australian environmental consultancy firm applying what I had just learnt and this time finally with a decent salary (NGOs do not pay well, on money terms I mean). At that time we did projects mainly for multilateral donors, trying to solve a myriad of environmental problems in China. This work gave me first hand access to environmental experts of Chinese water and environmental agencies, and to see their work. It was also very funny to watch Australians and Chinese people mingle in the technical meetings, and realize their different approach to things like environmental data. On one occasion my ex-boss asked a Chinese
expert why the pollution values of one particular year did not appear in the graph he was showing during a presentation, the presenter very calmly replied “Oh, we took that year´s value out because it was too high”. During those days I learned one crucial thing about how to work in China: the people here are really interested in technical details and you have to know very well, and by heart, the “key numbers” of your trade because you are going to be asked, in the middle of a huge meeting, something like “Thanks Andrew for your explanation about how watersheds are organized in Spain, but please can you tell us which is the maximum concentration in milligrams per liter of nitrates for water that is to be discharged directly into a protected area in Spain? And Ammonia? “A question to which you must respond with a specific number, here a poker face doesn´t do the trick. After nearly three years with the hardworking-some-what-crazy Australians I got an opportunity to work with a Spanish company, Tradebe, this time being in charge of two environmental feasibility studies, with potential subsequent investment, in two cities in the province of Jiangsu. My job was to lead the consulting team and represent the company in China, which included much technical work, field visits, infrastructure calculation and dimensioning of plants, study of local environmental regulation, and
NEWS ENGINYERS XINA 2015 // FEBRER - MARÇ | 21