Innovating for the Future & Winning over the World with Intelligence: “Discover Reliable” with CTCI

The wave of intelligence has swept the globe and the world we live in is rapidly changing. Robots have replaced the bank tellers, while the Internet of things has broken the boundaries of time and space so that people can shop till they drop without even setting their feet out of their home. Innovations and changes have become inextricable in our daily lives. By contrast, let’s take a look at how business used to be run. In the past, an abundant manpower supply and cheap products constitute a business niche. Now, as we enter into the era of “Industrial 4.0”, "Intelligence" is really the key to success for staying ahead of the game! In the future, robots and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will join our ranks for a variety of tasks at CTCI's construction sites. At the design stations of our offices, CTCI’s engineers wearing virtual reality (VR) helmets will be able to virtually experience scenarios as if they were personally inside a finished petrochemical plant soon to be completed through the cloud technology. We understand that merely adapting to the trend can no longer allow us to keep pace with the changes in the global market. Before the tides roll in, only if we are fully prepared for countermeasure by putting in place the innovation for the future can we “win over the world with intelligence”.

To meet the challenge of the global engineering market, CTCI Group has built a global brand and, following its rebranding project, has made an organizational change to separate the Group into three core business units, namely "Engineering Business", "Intelligent Solution" and "Resource Cycling", as well as the unit of Group Shared Services. All units cooperate to actively advance the pace of development of various undertakings. By further cultivating the corporate culture of "Professionalism, Integrity, Teamwork and Innovation" and embed them into CTCI employee’s DNA, CTCI has already developed a new vision and expects to become "the Most Reliable Global Engineering Services Provider" to continue its quest to drive the corporation to become globally sustainable.

Developing New Dimensions in Turnkey Service

Cultivating Global Landscape: Optimizing Cross-Border Management Capabilities

With nearly 40 years of experience in technology expertise in petrochemical and infrastructure projects, CTCI Group has made substantial achievements and successfully established strong market presence in the Middle East, Asia and the Americas, with established customer trust. For 2017, a number of notable milestone projects in the Middle East were completed in succession, including the second phase of LR-2 refinery expansion project in Qatar, the SAMAC MMA/PMMA EPC project in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Kayan Furnace-10 Project, Ti-Sponge Titanium Project, etc. The ongoing landmark projects include the Liwa Plastics Industries Complex (LPIC) Package 1 – Steam Cracker with Off-Site Works & Utilities in Oman, LTA Thomson Line Trackwork Project in Singapore, the RAPID Package 1 RFCC Project in Malaysia, RAPID Package 28B EPCC Project, etc. Whether it is in the field of petrochemical or infrastructure, CTCI has made fruitful achievements in expanding and cultivating global markets.

In addition, the shale gas production in the U.S. has changed the global energy landscape, which used to be dominated by the Middle East in the past. To capitalize on these shale gas business opportunities, CTCI successfully made a headway to the U.S. market and secured several contracts including the engineering and EPC projects of the Formosa Plastics Group plants, the front-end engineering design (FEED) works of a mega petrochemical complex investment project by ExxonMobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC), etc. It brought a whole new dimension to CTCI’s turnkey service and allowed CTCI to successfully venture into the high-end of the global EPC market stage. To develop and cultivate the U.S. market, CTCI, for the first time, recruited an American professional manager equipped with rich experience and contacts in the energy industry of the U.S. to serve as a senior executive in CTCI Americas and to join the CTCI’s management team that was mainly composed of Asian Chinese. However, for the first time, CTCI is facing the impact of management issues and challenges arising from the cultural differences between East and West. In the future, CTCI must further strengthen its international thinking, eliminate barriers of language and culture, and establish a bilingual standard operating procedure in both Chinese and English to jointly build a solid cross-border management capability.

On the other hand, in addition to extending its existing EPC service categories through “vertical and horizontal” expansion and maximizing the Group's existing businesses, CTCI is committed to optimizing the integration and execution capabilities of EPC turnkey projects. CTCI continues to make changes and improvement in various aspects such as engineering technology, procurement, research and development, quality/HSE, etc. By actively introducing IT intelligent technology, CTCI aims to create intelligent technology “iEPC” for its turnkey service and build big data foundation for the intelligent turnkey service system and a variety of projects. Through iEPC, CTCI will enhance the Group’s project management capabilities and strengthen the overall synergy of the team.

Creating New Value of Intelligent Service

Innovating Service Patterns and Establishing Market Competition Differentiation

Innovation, one of the four corporate cultures of CTCI, is an important key that allows CTCI to always be able to cope with the trend, transformation, innovation and steady growth over the years. Apart from establishing the project integration and cross-sector integration capabilities, CTCI also adapts to different stages of the trend such as the development of information technology, internet age, etc. and keeps pace with the times to reform the Group’s internal and external information, knowledge and communication for experience sharing purposes. For a long time, CTCI has created its greatest value by continuously innovating processes and business models to provide more differentiated and competitive innovative services.

In terms of technological innovation, let’s take the RAPID Package 1 RFCC Project in Malaysia of last year as an example. One of the project’s highlights is the "CO boiler modularization and pre-assembly". CTCI succeeded in completing boiler assembly and installation of two of the country's heaviest modularized waste heat boilers in Taiwan and then delivering them by ship to the construction site in Malaysia for installation. The two massive boilers—each weighing more than 2,000 tons and would have taken 18 to 20 months to assemble at project site—were pre-assembled in Taiwan, and the overall project duration was shortened by nearly 10 months, which greatly saved the manpower and use of the machinery at the job site. For this project, CTCI has won a special recognition and trust from the owner. For CTCI, it also set a new milestone in the project delivery of turnkey engineering and technology.

We have witnessed the rapid development of the Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence era in recent years. In addition to the continuous research and development of new technologies and developing tools to optimize the iEPC intelligent turnkey project services by the Innovation R&D Center, CTCI has formed the Group Intelligent Solutions Business consists of five subsidiary companies that are with extensive intelligent technologies and experience needed for developing intelligent solutions. Its task is to build big data analytics and forecasting capabilities towards the goal of being a “Solutions Provider + Service Provider” through the accumulation of the engineering experience in areas such as infrastructure, building, transportation and high-tech process plants, and with expanded services to areas such as smart industrial park and smart city, etc. in its efforts to find potential business opportunities through the innovative service models.

Enhancing Resource Cycling Efficiency

Maximizing Resource Efficiency and Sharing Green Economy Future

Renewable energy resources and circular economy are the trends of global development. They are also the targets actively promoted by many governments and are closely linked with public policies, civil society, and community participation. CTCI Group has been cultivating the resource cycling industry for 20 years. ECOVE Environment Services Corporation., one of its subsidiaries, is also the first environmental resource management service company in Taiwan that has obtained the operation license of foreign incineration plants. Its business lines range from the original business of waste management and Energy-from-Waste to the gradual expansion into recycling and reuse of various materials and resources such as solid waste and wastewater, including recycling of polyester into fiber and wastewater reclamation. Moreover, the company has also stepped into the field of solar photovoltaic since 2010 and actively promoted the development of renewable energy both at home and abroad. Take the Lumberton Photovoltaic Power Plant (PVPP) located in New Jersey, USA for example, the plant was officially opened in 2016 and provides approximately 12 million kWh of unpolluted, green electric energy to the local region every year. It has been considered beneficial for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the mitigation of global warming.

Accordingly, in order to effectively expand its global business and international reputation, CTCI Group established a new "ECOVE" brand under its umbrella last year. With the core purpose of "Applying technical knowhow to advance efficiencies in ‘resource cycling’" and the belief of “Every Resource Counts”, CTCI Group is fully committed to developing the three pillars of its resource cycling core business: Incineration & Waste Management, Solar Photovoltaic, and Recycling by combining the existing engineering backbone and intelligent technology advantage, and through actively participating in government policies and partnering with local community initiatives. In May 2017, its efforts had been honored by British Standard Institution with the BS 8001:2017 Circular Economy Certification, the world’s first circular economy standard, and became the world’s first certified enterprise. By technological and business-model innovation in Incineration & Waste Management and efficiency enhancement to produce entirely new services of resource cycling, it has achieved the highest grade of BS 8001:2017 standard by conforming to the aim of circular economy. In the days to come, CTCI will continue to enhance the green impacts efforts to make ECOVE the most reliable provider of industry-leading resource cycling services.

Strengthening the Soft Power of Corporate Culture

Cultivating All-round Talents and Discover Reliable

"Professionalism, Integrity, Teamwork and Innovation" are the four pillars of CTCI's corporate culture and the fundamental backbones and spirits of CTCI employee's behavioral indicators. Therefore, CTCI launched a new branding project in 2016 to build a new brand image for CTCI and operate under the brand spirit of "Most Reliable". Through a series of corporate culture activities launched by the Human Resources Division in 2017, CTCI has precisely implemented the corporate culture so that the "Most Reliable" spirit and attitude takes root in every CTCI employee through various quantitative indicators and jointly demonstrate and deliver the most reliable corporate image and appearance.

For CTCI Group, talent is the most valuable asset of the organization. On one hand, with respect to talent cultivation, CTCI breaks up the past practice of seeking qualified personnel on the basis of job requirements and actively sets up and plans future job vacancies for key positions, along with step-by-step plans to cultivate full-time professionals; on the other hand, CTCI provides career development planning to current staff and empower them to excel in their talents and aptitudes through diversified vertical and horizontal internal promotions and rotation channels. With all these in place, CTCI expects to establish a full range of all-around elite engineering workforce equipped with mature decision-making ability and international perspective for them to meet up challenges in a globalized era.

Over the years, CTCI Group has been developing its business steadily and making headways into the international market successfully. CTCI is not only a brand from Taiwan that shines in the international community, but also an example of Taiwan's economic development. Last year, in collaboration with Harvard Business Review, CTCI published "Discover Reliable," a book detailing how CTCI has evolved from being a small local engineering firm into one of the top 100 engineering companies in the world and the number one leader in the industry in Taiwan, including its continuous initiatives in coping with ongoing change to pursue the sustainable growth. Reliability, it is intangible and priceless. Being trusted by being trustworthy, CTCI’s reliability is there for all to see! By publishing this book, we hope that we can consolidate the cohesion among CTCI colleagues around the globe towards establishing a sustainable business model, and speak out to the world for Taiwan's engineering services industry, and also make the world discover that CTCI is indeed the “Most Reliable.”