THE END OF A YEAR

This is the final newsletter from the Chapter's Board for 2004-2005 and we end it on a high note: bringing you news of a number of exciting events.

It has been a busy year for the Board and we hope that you have found great value in being a Member of the Hong Kong Chapter. We launched our new website, improved the look and content of the monthly newsletters, ran an education course called "Introduction to Facility Management" and introduced our Scholarship Award. Details of the Award will be follow in a subsequent edition.

A diverse series of site visits was held, including visits to 1 Peking Road and Three Pacific Place. We also held a number of breakfast seminars on topics such as implementing change in the workplace and FM in China.

Another highlight of the year was the conference in November which was co-organised with HKIFM. We hope to develop this collaboration for the benefit of all FM-ers in Hong Kong in the future.

Also looking forward, we are pleased to report that many people have volunteered to participate in the Chapter's activities next year. The new Board are due to be elected at the AGM on 16 th June (see details within).

Another event taking place this month is a site visit to AIG Tower and in July we will hold a breakfast seminar about Langham Place, the 1.8m sqft. 3-in-1 mega development in Mongkok.

Two well attended events last month were the HKIFM conference in Shanghai, on Strategic Facility Management in China and a breakfast seminar from Alvin Tang of Newtech Technology. Alvin provided some very helpful hints on how facility managers can tackle the problems experienced in the management of internet data centres.

Alvin Tsang receives a question during the May breakfast seminar.

The conference in Shanghai was a great success, demonstrating that whilst FM is still a new concept in China, there is a great hunger to learn and holds a wealth of opportunities for the FM-er. One of the keynote speakers was Matt Dawson, current Chair of IFMA, and the event was attended by a number of participants from Hong Kong and the Chapter Board including the President, Jon Seller and myself.