By Jan Hökerberg

In the summer of 2015, Bamboo received an assignment from Jardine Schindler in Hong Kong to write the text for an entry to American magazine Elevator World’s prestigious competition, Project of the Year 2016 – a global competition in which most industry leaders participate.

The Hong Kong-based Schindler company were entering the competition for the first time and selected a project at the Great Eagle Centre for the category of Elevator Modernisation.

We interviewed staff at Schindler, did our research legwork, studied former entries and collected as much information as possible about the project.

Then we wrote the application text according to the rules of the competition.

In late 2015, we received word that our client had won the award. We were incredibly happy for Jardine Schindler – and also, we might add, for ourselves, on being able to do our absolute best for a valued client.

I remember one time in 2004 when another client – also a Hong Kong construction-industry leader, asked me to write an application for a performance award within the client’s group of companies.

The client normally wrote such entries themselves, but they’d realised it was only 48 hours before the deadline and nothing had been prepared.

The award application was for a bridge in Hong Kong’s New Territories. I met with the project manager and learned as much as I could about the project, before going home, where I continued with my research..

As the hours slipped by, I was up all night, organising my research, structuring the content and eventually writing. Early the next morning, our native-speaker editor went through my 23 A4 pages of text and we sent it to the client.

I slept for a few hours and just when I arrived at the office, the client called: “I’m reading the entry you wrote for us now,” he said. “It’s brilliant!”

Unfortunately, I don’t think the client’s entry was the winner, but I felt a sense of satisfaction with what I’d achieved and – most importantly – the client was happy to be able to deliver the entry on time.

Coincidentally, five years later, I found myself flat hunting in Tuen Mun and suddenly I caught a glimpse of that very same bridge for the first time in my life – the one I’d spent an entire night writing what, at the time, felt like the equivalent of a novel about.

Today, I pass that bridge every day by bus – sometimes I cross it by car – and I get a curious feeling, as if it’s standing there to remind me what Bamboo’s business is all about: putting clients’ interests first and making them happy.