Ir HON Chi-keung Chief Executive and Secretary

Time to turn a page

In just a few weeks, Session 2022/2023 will draw to a close¹. Although the Session has been cut short by two months as a result of the COVID pandemic, to say that it has been one of the most eventful years recently is not an overstatement.

Proceeding along the path set out in the “Time to Change Roadmap”, a lot of initiatives were undertaken with the objective of attaining “Boosting Professionalism – We are Proud to be Engineers”. Readers will recall that we staged the unprecedented flagship event of “Hong Kong Engineers Week 2023” in March. This has received many accolades from members of both the Institution and public. We received appreciations for the first time like, “I know now who engineers are”; “engineers do matter to us”, many of which coming from the youngsters taking part in the Carnival of the event.

Gaining prominence for the profession obviously could not rely on just one spotlight. We did much to engage with the community via making our presence at media inquiries or interviews, promoting the engineer with videos and many other posts on our social network platforms; reaching out to the academia in preparation for enlisting the younger generation to engineering; and so on. With the social distancing restrictions progressively uplifted earlier this year, we reconnect with the rest of the world with an abundance of mutual visits, receiving delegations; and holding of international conferences. The latest one is the Second Greater Bay Area Engineers Forum which we have co-hosted most successfully with our Mainland counterparts at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

When we are moving towards the next Session, it can be foretold that the drive to enhance the visibility of engineers will not be attenuated. We are already working on launching new social media promotion campaigns using Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and later WeChat, to promote the advancement of engineering. Our mascot, “Hally”, will make appearances in the upcoming promotion campaigns. Besides, we will continue our efforts to nurture engineering successors by promoting STEAM Education, in which school engagement programmes such as “Back to School”, “One School One Engineer”, “School Ambassador” and “Engineer Cadet” will play the central parts.

So much for brushing up our appearance; members’ needs and concerns remain dear to heart. Indeed, “Enhancing Services to Members” has long been identified, in our “Time to Change Roadmap”, as one of the five major areas of focus of the Institution’s upcoming missions. We reckon that more efforts will be made on this front in the next Session. There are already plans being made for different areas on how we could assist in membership acquisition, promote engineering knowledge sharing, enhance our membership value and benefits, and driving membership growth. All these will be conducted with the overarching goal of maximising members’ satisfaction through improved services provided for them.

As a prelude, we are already working to put in place a new regional base for our members’ use. It is situated in HK NEO at the very heart of the Kowloon East CBD2. It will serve multi-purpose functions, including as venue for meetings and seminars, and will be made available upon booking. The target date for opening of the new base is July. Furthermore, discussions are being held on establishing effective qualification mechanisms in house to facilitate our members on emerging fields such as BIM, EIA and EM&A. Universal recognition of our qualifications so attained is obviously the key to success. Establishing a spirit of cooperation with the relevant organisations and entities is also crucial.

I hope that the above will give readers a flavour of what is in store for the next Session. As we are pressing ahead with our journey of change, we can expect many exciting events to happen in the coming months.

¹ The 48th Annual General Meeting will be held on 28 June 2023.