HIDA Journal 2017 SPRING No.10

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3No. 10 SPRING 2017learn such and other necessary technologies to meet the demand of the time, and raise their technological expertise in survey and editing so as to meet our orders.I see your choice from HIDA’s General Orientation Course (GOC) range is the standard six-week course. What level of command of Japanese does your company expect to see in the trainees?In comparison to how it was when we trained the trainees ourselves at our company, the trainees who has undergone Japanese language training in HIDA’s GOC prior to coming to us have a completely different level of command. They have become able to conduct day to day affairs in Japanese, as well as to communicate what are necessary in their Specialized Technical Training (STT); we found that very helpful. As HIDA’s GOC also helps them adapt life in Japan better; we, as a corporation, truly value the program. We sometimes even exchange email in Japanese with them, after they returned to Nepal.What points do you place special consideration when providing guidance with STT?At present, the Research and Survey Division is responsible for placement of the trainees within our company for the practical aspect of training, i.e. the STT. We prepare instruction manuals, task protocols and such materials as much as we can for organized systematic teaching. Our intention is to have our trainees learn the tasks necessary to build and administer server and network environment that provides the foundation of development and application when developing the software and web services.The important technology in recent years is development of application software to aid more effective utilization of elec-tronic map data, i.e. adding more values. We call this technology Geographic Information System, or GIS for short. The currently placed trainees are learning this GIS.There may not be so many needs for such advanced appli-cation software in Nepal, yet. However, we believe the time of higher needs will come, as seen among the ASEAN countries.What is it like for the STT trainees in terms of their living environment?We accommodate male trainees in our company’s male dormitory. For female trainees, we lease a room in an apartment respectively. Both live within a few minutes’ walk from the company. Our company is situated near Nagoya Airport, which means they will not nd it inconvenient to get groceries, or to go to the downtown shopping district in Nagoya City on their day off.You have had many superb engineers come to Japan for training with HIDA’s TPIJ, including several female engineers. Are you happy with the work performance of those TPIJ graduates now back in their country?We have always let the Nepalese manage the associated company in Nepal. We have never had a Japanese employee stationed in Nepal. Our involvement is limited to such occasions as when they need technical support from Japanese staff on temporary overseas assignment. The trainees we had when we started are already holding head of department level posts. Not many have left the company. We have contracted the Nepalese company work on a part of system development, and have seen their level of technical expertise advance every year. To us, they are now a fully reliable partner.We hear Nepal is not yet to fully rebuild the country, after the devastating earthquake in April 2015 damaged the country. Did your Nepalese company suffer any damage or have any impact on their business?The company is situated in the Lalitpur City near Kathmandu. The day the quake struck was the Saturday, April 25th, when, luckily, the company was closed and no employee was injured there. However, the staircase of the building collapsed; which forced the company to move to another building in the end.Although the country is still treading the path to full recover, our Nepalese company had a business contract, survey of damaged housing/buildings, from a Japanese consulting company. We have heard that survey contract was a part of Japanese Government funded aid program for rebuilding.Since establishing the associated company in Nepal 20 years ago, you have seen gradual increase of the number of Japan-trained personnel, leading a larger pool of human resource with IT skills. Can you share us your company’s vision for future overseas expansion?In our view, the demand for map data in Japan has hit the ceiling and will not grow much in future. We think, however, new demands will gradually increase in such markets and the ASEAN countries, for application in marketing or regional disaster reduc-tion efforts.We believe the key to future success for our company is to meet those new demands and expand into overseas market. The engineers at GeoSpatial Systems Pvt., Ltd. in Nepal are equipped with skills and experiences learnt at our company, as well as a good command of English. We would like to work in partnership with them to expand our business.I see the training you facilitate is in a specialist area: map data system development. Still I see very well how Japanese and Nepalese engineers work in partnership in development of this technology. We hope to see in not far future a Japan-Nepal joint project in the ASEAN market. Thank you very much for your assistance with our interview today.Near the building that accommodates the Nepalese associate company

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