All in all, there was no reduction in leases, says Glatte, owing in part to the company's rapid growth in the region. The new facility will boost the company's square footage in KL by 41,000 sq. ft. (3,809 sq. m.) But he sounds a note of caution in assessing the cultural differences that can crop up during negotiations and project execution.
   "When we came close to the point that we were expecting to sign a tenancy agreement, there was always this kind of 'Yes, no problem, don't worry, we can do it,'" says Glatte. But with the move-in and renovation due to begin in January 2005, Glatte was told three days before Christmas that, in fact, delivery would not occur on schedule.
   Alternatives offered were not up to the expected standards. "Reliability was an issue, and it took a lot of discussion, encouragement and pressure to get back on track. I had to go up the hierarchy."
   Given the attention the project was receiving from BASF senior management, such roadblocks were "pretty annoying," says Glatte. "In Malaysia, you really have to chase people to get things done. What we did in the end was have one person purely deal with facility management" as overlapping move-in and fit-out began to take place.
   Glatte adds that the project did not choose the country's CyberJaya region, which offers tax breaks for IT-related projects, in part because the SSC is a cost center and not a profit center, and in part because that zone is marooned outside the city with "virtually no transportation link. Shell, DHL and HSBC have facilities there, and they have to provide shuttle bus service," he says. "That's not attractive to us. Shuttles are not too expensive, but they're inflexible. If the time is not right and they miss it, they have to wait, and it may be a few hours. It's also unattractive for people to commute for an hour or more, when half an hour is regarded as reasonable."
   Asked for his assessment of business climate conditions for facility development in the rest of Southeast Asia, Glatte says Thailand is moving quickly up the ladder, but faces similar problems with transportation congestion in and around Bangkok. That congestion has been eased by new subways and skytrains — "The more this develops, Thailand could become something," says Glatte. Manila is also a rising star, he says, due to labor costs and excellent language skills.
   One year down the road, Glatte says, "We're now really getting things done. You have to escalate the problem to get a solution sometimes, and we had to chase people down. But once we have them, we get things done quickly.
   "Meanwhile," he says, "we're growing even faster than we initially expected, with 251 employees on site as of end of January 2006. The facility is gorgeous, and other companies [e.g. DHL] have moved into the same building since they saw us moving in there. Looking back right now, we feel pretty confident that we made the right decisions there from a properties perspective."