Challenging Job in Bangkok – Diligence – Cinthya Kusumadewi

Cinthya Kusumadewi is the first Indonesian Facility Manager to be sent overseas as an expat to lead a local facility management team. Her task was to lead the setting up process of Deutsche Bank project in Bangkok, Thailand.

Leading a setting up process is a challenging job, taking over a project from a competitor, taking over the premises from the project manager - as the project is a new premises located at a brand new office building in downtown Bangkok, the Athenee Tower. As Cinthya had to lead an entirely new team, the job was even more challenging. She needed to lead the recruitment/selection, training and the actual handover from the incumbent party and the setting up of hundreds of tasks of the Facility Management service. There was, of course, a team behind Cinthya; the whole process was under the leadership of Christina Ng, our Associate Director, who spent about two weeks in Bangkok to lead the training program to new staff as well as coordinating the handover process from the incumbent party to Colliers FM. Colliers FM also sent Deyla Novera and Arif Dharmawan during the setting up process to assist Cinthya in the areas of Facility Administration, Business Support Services, Helpdesk and IT. They worked closely together with the Colliers International Thailand’s team.

For Cinthya, what was more challenging was that she had to leave everything behind in Jakarta and do all of these tasks in Bangkok within a defined time frame. The schedule was very tight and the workload huge. Yet there were challenges that she faced daily: cultural differences, language barriers and the high expectations of the client.

Almost daily, Cinthya had to work until late at night and also during the weekend, both Saturdays and Sundays. Definitely, Bangkok was not a holiday destination for her, despite the promotion of the Thailand’s government.

At the end, all of this hard work paid off. Cheyenne Tan, Deutsche Bank’s Head of Facilities Solutions, South East Asia said, “I am impressed by how Cinthya managed to keep her cool in many of the difficult situations she faced when working in Bangkok.” Johnson Tan, Deutsche Bank’s Head of Engineering Operation Asia Pacific said, “Cinthya is very mature in the work and is professional in handling client feedback and requests”.