With a vision of “sharing is learning”, PMI Thailand’s content committee periodically interviews members of our PMI Thailand community to share their views on project management and on PMI Thailand. The first interviewee is K. Yodchai Apisitpaisarn, former President of PMI Thailand. The interview was done by Robert van Geijn, member of the content committee.
As former President of PMI Thailand, many people will know you. For those who don’t yet do, can you please tell a bit about yourself.
My name is Yodchai Apisitpaisarn. As the youngest of five brothers and sisters I grew up in a family who owned a restaurant business. Our family environment was very warm, which allowed me to have a happy childhood and build a good foundation for my future. My education includes a degree of Electrical Engineering, which I got in
Thailand. After successfully completing it, I started working at a local factory of an international manufacturing company where I was involved in the production of industry machines, like electric motors, watt hour meters, pumps and variable frequency drives. As part of my responsibilities I designed, built, prototyped and tested the different products. We repeated the product development process until we achieved success. Subsequently we would produce the new products in mass. The entire process came with multiple areas of risk that all needed to be managed with great care. Accordingly project management was quite critical. So from the very start of my profession I was involved in project management.
In order to further my career, I did a Master in Systems Engineering in the USA. For my final assignment I was involved in the development of a house appraisal system. Its function was to determine the value of properties and to provide comparisons with other similar properties. Calculation results were electronically submitted to the bank for subsequent loan determination. Since time was money, we used PDA’s to send the data. After graduation I worked at an Oil and Gas company where I was involved in the design and fabrication of derricks and substations. In different ways both the assignment and my profession came with more project management.
So ever since my very first job I was involved in project management. In time I grew very fond of it to an extent that it became my passion. It is therefore that upon my return from the USA in 2005 I decided to join a company that provides project management related services to its clients. To date I am still with that company as one of the co-owners. The company’s name is PSI Solutions.
Besides my work, I have many hobbies. I love travelling, including going to the beach with my many dogs. I also enjoy music, including playing my guitar, and Latin dancing like the Salsa, which is great fun. I am also a fan of sports, including badminton and soccer.
What is your relationship with PMI?
With a passion for project management it is not surprising that I ended up being connected with PMI. Ever since I returned from the USA I have been a member. As a matter of fact, I got to know about PMI during my years in the USA. Upon my return to Thailand I checked whether PMI also existed in Bangkok, which fortunately it did. I immediately became a PMI member and Bangkok Chapter member. Moreover, I also straightaway joined as a volunteer. I ended up being respectively Vice President of Programs, Director at Large and ultimately President. In 2012 I handed over the position to Petros, after he was elected as our new President.
From the day I joined I have sincerely enjoyed my relationship with PMI. It is a source of knowledge for any person who is passionate about project management; a community where we can learn and share about PMBOK knowledge areas and can network with peers who are also in the profession of project management. It adds a lot of value to everyone.
PMBOK’s 10 knowledge areas
What is your key focus area in project management?
My key focus in project management is building peoples’ competencies. Why? Because I see the value. I sincerely believe that project management greatly assists companies in fulfilling its strategic directions, including improving customer satisfaction, creating effectiveness and efficiency, cutting cost and so forth. I am also a strong believer of the fact that ultimately it is people who determine the success or failure of a project. Therefore I believe in building and developing human capability to ensure that people have good project management knowledge, skills and discipline. In this I focus both on individuals to build their respective competencies, and on organizations to ultimately reach an overall disciplined maturity of project management processes.
In my view project managers must continually improve their areas of competency. This goes further than just project management itself. Even though it is critical, only having good project management skills may not guarantee the success of a project. On top of hard core project management skills, project managers need soft skills e.g. leadership skills, negotiation skills and so forth. Furthermore, project managers also need specific application knowledge areas, like industry knowledge. A good project manager balances these skill sets in order to successfully manage projects, and does this in harmony with an organization’s environment and culture.
Furthermore, in order to advance a project manager’s career, a project manager should understand his or her strengths and weaknesses, and with this the potential areas of improvement. Once an individual has identified these, he or she can tackle them by formulating training needs and other ways of professional development, like coaching. These will help to close possible skill gaps in an efficient manner. Ultimately imperfections are the basis of skill development to at the end make the project manager more effective within organizations and to provide the organization with reasons to support decisions on skill development of its project managers.
How do you see PMI’s position in the Thai society?
If you look at PMI Thailand today, it is still a small community. Although it is recognized by international companies, it is not yet truly recognized by Thai companies. Since the objective of PMI Thailand is to promote project management in Thailand, we still have a lot of work to do. Ultimately we shall be recognized by the Thai community and get many more Thai members in our chapter who recognize the importance of project management. Nowadays Thai companies don’t perceive project management as strategic, as one of the key enablers for companies to be successful. Simply because they don’t see the value.
This is very different from international companies who have increasingly positioned project management as strategic, have adopted project management best practices, have organized standard project management processes across the organization and have instilled discipline among its staff. In doing so quite some companies have already reached high levels of maturity, and have experienced the benefits of professionally managing time, budgets, performance and related critical topics.
How do you see PMI’s position in the future, also looking at developments like AEC?
Time is really now for PMI Thailand to get the recognition of Thai companies. The upcoming AEC will come with a free flow of skilled labour, people who can easily transfer across countries throughout the region. Our country could potentially face a “brain drain, brain gain” versus other countries, where we end up losing the skills (brain drain) while other countries get the skills (brain gain).
Skilled project managers who are PMP certified could simply find it more interesting to work abroad, for example, in Singapore. This is not only because of monetary reasons but also because there is a higher level of recognition of certified project managers and more knowledge sharing. Countries that can get and retain skilled staff will have major benefits versus countries that can’t. It is important that Thailand develops as a country where skilled staff are built, recognized and retained. Key topics include communication, cultural intelligence, ethics and professional conduct, so Thai people will be able to work with any culture throughout AEC. PMI Thailand can definitely and shall play a role in this.
In order to play a key role, PMI Thailand shall find ways to engage with more people and get more participants onboard to ultimately get more members. In order to achieve this, additional benefits to members shall be put in place, like education and research that relates to people locally. We have a lot of research material, including articles, white papers and the like from PMI Global. Yet these are rarely related to project management in Thailand.
We should create more for Thailand with Thai members, also by building specialized communities of practices to for example share project management experiences across industries, like construction, ICT and healthcare. In this way people with different backgrounds can learn from each other, which will greatly benefit everyone
In total more enthusiasm shall be created around project management, for example through education of young kids or to non-profit organizations. These are just some examples of possible initiatives we can do in order to promote project management and its many benefits throughout Thailand.
Are you positive about PMI’s direction?
Lately I experience a lot of positive energy in PMI Thailand and an increasing amount of activities, like presentations, training and field trips. They all provide added value to our local members, which is really good. I am confident that with the current energy we can build our future and bring it to a level of sustainable growth.
We must just continue what we are doing today and get more volunteers to help us further in building our future. That would be very good. So yes, I am positive. If it comes to volunteering, I sincerely appreciate all the hard work that is being put in, especially since it is done on top of everybody’s working and private lives. It’s exactly this kind of determination we need to build our future.
Do you have any final remarks for the members of PMI Thailand?
Be active. Participate in PMI Thailand, and share and learn!