17th Congregation of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Speech by Prof. Tsang Chiu Kwan

Dear Graduates

I am so happy to see all of you here with high expectations of your future, getting a job in one of the fields that building services engineering will offer, or further your studies with aspirations to offer your skills to the community. Today, I like to focus on the contributions to society made by building services engineers.

Do not think that I, personally being an engineer by profession, trained many years ago, am now speaking to you on the virtues of engineers. In my many many years in engineering, a large part of my career is actually managing a company and meeting with business people across many domains but I am still proud to be an engineer who has been trained with logical thinking and analytical skills. Maybe not many of you have heard what the founding President of Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew said to reporters during one interview. He was asked what he thought the greatest invention in the 20th Century was and he, without thinking for a second, said air-conditioning, not computers or anything else. Without air-conditioning, he said, people in the tropics might still be lying near a coconut tree or on a banana farm, dozing off and just waiting for the fruits to ripen and eat and pass the day.  Economic advancement in the last several hundred years mainly took place in temperate climates.  Only with the invention and application of air-conditioning did tropical and sub-tropical places gain economic prominence.

Building Services Engineering is an evolution of the application of various engineering techniques to the many necessary details required of a building, such as lifts and escalators, lighting, heating, ventilation and cooling etc. Your predecessors, before formal education was available for building services engineers in HK or elsewhere, are conversions from electrical and mechanical disciplines. I studied electrical engineering at HKU many years ago, joined the profession of electrical engineering and gradually expanded myself across the various disciplines of building services engineering. I was amazed at the vast black hole of knowledge that I have not mastered. What I can say about building services engineers’ contributions to society in the last 3 decades are the improved expectations of the requirements of home and office comfort. But in a city like Hong Kong, buildings actually use up to 90% of energy of the entire city. This is a similar situation for other major cities around the world. Building services engineers have helped to enhance the comfort, convenience and productivity of many people through their various disciplines. This, I believe, you have been told many times by your Professors and Lecturers why you have so correctly chosen building services engineering and you should be proud of yourselves.

But if we take a step back and look into the future, are we still satisfied with what we are contributing to society in the way that your big brothers have been doing in the last 20-30 years? Obviously, the answer is no. Because there are so many cities springing up everywhere, especially in up and coming countries like China, India, Brazil etc. Energy usage is actually posing a threat to the depletion of energy sources, even though some innovations of solar and wind energy are now catching on quickly.  What we building services engineers have to contribute better to society is to integrate innovative ways of energy conservation and reduction. Obviously PolyU has played a very significant role in preparing you for the road ahead.  But remember, the difficulty ahead of you is not how you should apply your engineering skills, the real difficulty, in my opinion, is to convince so many existing owners of building premises to change their habits or to invest more to save. Trust me, this is an easier-said-than-done proposition. You will always be asked by existing owners, why change? What is in there for me? If you just tell them that this will be good for the next generation, how do you counter the argument about how the next generation would be good to me now? I urge you to think deeply into this, which maybe a little beyond engineering and I have become a little philosophical here, but I personally have encountered such challenges many times when trying to persuade potential clients to pay upfront in order to save in the future.

It has already been proven that energy-saving in buildings can be achieved to a very large degree. Don’t you think you should be pushing hard for new buildings, and also to enact energy-saving measures in existing buildings? I have been telling you that building services engineering had made great contributions to society in the past.  But in the future I believe our contributions could even be greater. Green is the glowing word and you can definitely play a significant role in the greening of buildings. When you look back in 20 or 30 years time, what you start now can become a milestone in your mission to change your world.

Thank you very much.