In real estate, on-site reality - not theory - is a where the big lessons are found

For this reason, we established AP Academy in 2015, the first institution of its kind in Thailand where one can learn everything there is to know about the real estate industry.
AP Thailand’s objective is to emphasise the importance of every step in property development if one is to achieve high standards of quality - from building design to construction as well as marketing, sales, after sales services, right down to property management. I am a firm believer in people - that in order to build a quality house, we as the building organisation, need to attach great importance to the quality of people and their development.
Apart from developing quality, skilled, knowledgeable and capable human resources through intensive training courses provided by AP Property School, AP Academy also introduced AP Open House to impart knowledge, experience and opportunity through internship to university students to sharpen their minds and skills for life after graduation. We believe that people are front and centre in the development of Thailand and its real estate industry.
Through AP Open House, we hope to educate and elevate our young generation’s capabilities, for they are the future of Thailand’s engineering sector and an important factor in the development of quality real estate projects. AP Academy will also contribute to the establishment of a more stringent international standard for Thailand’s real estate community. This is the first year for an internship programme to be offered at AP Academy. We have shortlisted 30 civil engineering students from more than 600 applicants from around the country for this year’s AP Open House.
I want the young generation to experience the real business of real estate, that there is more to it than meets the eye. Initially, they imagine that working with a real estate company is nothing more than having a plot of land, where you build a house which you later sell.
I want young people, especially those about to graduate, to learn the work process from a real construction site where they will soon realise that theory learned in the classroom is much more complicated, often not the same, in practice.
I have often been asked if the AP Open House programme is AP’s CSR initiative. My answer is that, in the first place, CSR is not the main objective of inventing AP Open House. But it’s my passion set in motion. I love to share my learning. I want to plant the seeds that will grow productive engineers to serve Thailand’s real estate industry.
While the two-month internship period at AP Open House is an intensive programme, aimed to ensure that the company’s real estate practice is the most comprehensive in Thailand, it has also been designed so that the students will enjoy every minute of learning. We worked with many business partners who share specialised know-how with the interns. For example, Pylon Plc demonstrated how the wet piling method is done on site; Syntec Construction showed them the ropes regarding the preparation of machinery used in the construction of condominiums, how to build a system to prevent land subsidence and the selection of subsidence prevention tools such as pile wall, sheet piles, open cut and diaphragm wall, among others.
At the conclusion of training, the students who have studied under the AP Open House programme, will each receive a certificate from AP Academy and an opportunity to be selected as one of three representatives who will take a study trip to Japan under the wing of Mitsubishi Estate Group, our business partner. The trip will allow them to learn international-standard construction processes which in future should also contribute to the sustainable development of Thailand’s real estate industry.
One of the three student interns selected for the Japan trip said he wanted to join the programme from the moment we went on a campus roadshow because he felt the internship would provide him with a good opportunity to experience first-hand the whole process of property development. Giving his best during the screening test and during the activities, he was finally selected for the programme. He was determined to use the knowledge and experience offered by AP Open House – from the big picture of the work to the specifics as well as on-site reality. He also told me that going out and actually doing the real job and seeing the real world was much better than learning in the classroom.