This post will be brief because I didn’t plan to visit a manufacturing site on this stop. The purpose of visiting Kuala Lumpur (KL) was a meeting with the emergency response leadership of a very large petrochemical manufacturer.
As soon as I left the airport in KL, I felt the focus on progress and modernity. Everything seemed new and had a grand scale to it. The KL skyline is anchored by the Petronas Towers, once the tallest building in the world (each tower is now 7th and 8th respectively), and the ones around it are impressive too. Seeing it first hand, it seems that the East is really the new world. Building and investment is so rapid. I confirmed the feeling with a little research: 8 of the 10 tallest buildings in the world are in Asia or the Middle East.
This bias toward expansion fuels very ambitious petrochemical projects. Several are planned or under way that will employ tens of thousands of people and build complexes that exceed the largest in the industry. In my meetings, I had the distinct impression that this part of the world carries a strong “frontier” mentality, like the Oklahoma Sooners when they raced out to stake their claim.
Large scale facilities are nearly impossible to manage in emergencies unless data can be collected quickly and staff can be trained to do the right thing. With such massive projects and facilities, there is a growing market for AllClear here.
I boarded my onward flight to Singapore with the firm conviction that we can solve many important problems for the refining and petrochemical industry in Malaysia very soon.
Next stop: Singapore