My field trip participation to Nippon Koei Co., Ltd.
by Uyanga Tumurbaatar, Mongolia, GSEP student 2016
On November 29, we, together with our GSEP professors, visited one of Japan’s top international engineering consultants company with long splendid history, Nippon Koei Co., Ltd.
Its founder, Mr. Yutaka Kubota established the Nippon Koei shortly after the World War II by constructing dam, hydropower station in North Korea and China. Since then, the company has been working on projects in wide range of fields (energy, transportation, water and sanitation, environment and agriculture, urban and industry, public sector) in over 130 countries.
After warm introduction between the Nippon Koei engineers and our group, we visited the memorial room for Mr. Yutaka Kubota. When Mr. Koji Morio was explaining about the history of the company, telling us about the contribution and vision of Mr. Yutaka Kubota, which haven’t lost the value even a bit over those years. We could see the employers’ respect for the founder and their enthusiasm toward those amazing construction works.
The two young engineers presented us about the projects they worked on in 5 years in Nippon Koei. Mr. Kenichiro Yoshida from Urban Development Department talked about three projects and general procedure of consultant work. Being an engineering consultant group, they need team work to do elaborate steps and procedures for the projects (from feasibility study to construction) depending on the contract. When he showed us the before and after pictures of the site of their project, the development of vast green land with cows to urban area with highway, tall buildings, I was very proud that someday I’m going to become an engineer like them who create things and make a change.
Mr. Hiroki Yoshikawa from the Water Supply and Sewerage Department introduced us to his project involving desalination of seawater. For me, who didn’t have much information about desalination of seawater, it was new and very interesting. The water is the most vital necessity for human life, but as population increases and agriculture, industry develops, the demand of water increases and source of clean water decreases. In this project, the treatment seawater to convert it to water suitable for everyday usage is great, and very practical. During his presentation, I was thinking about what can be the alternate water source for landlocked countries like Mongolia.
After getting familiar with the company in general, we had a great opportunity to ask questions and talk more freely with the engineers during the welcome party. One of the great advantages of working in international division of consulting company, which I would want to do someday, is to be able to work in many different places— meeting various people from diverse backgrounds. Because of that, all the engineers in Nippon Koei had astonishing language skills and have wide range of topics to talk about.
I also met Ms. Yuka Nakagawa the Environmental Science and Engineering Department of Nippon Koei, who greeted with me in Mongolian. She said she worked in Mongolia for 2 months, and stressed that an engineering is a lifelong studying and especially doing consultancy requires wide range of knowledge from different engineering fields to economics, etc. After talking with her, I was thankful for joining the GSEP where I can study various subjects from engineering and liberal arts.
During this visit, we also managed to ask for an advice for our university years. Mr.Hiroki Yoshikawa and Mr.Kenichiro Yoshida advised us to learn languages and improve the communication skills, which is very important to make others understand your idea, besides studying engineering.
In the end, I would like to thank to our GSEP teachers and Nippon Koei family, who welcomed us warmly, for providing us this great educational and inspiring visit. As they said, we hope to work with you maybe in Japan or in our countries in few years!
