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A Report on the trip to Hong Kong and China by Tony Begin (CSCE SVP), Brian Burrell (VP – Technical Programs) and Todd Chan (VP – International) – October 29 to November 8, 2013
The first part of this report describes CSCE activities undertaken in Hong Kong with members of the CSCE Hong Kong Branch (HKB) and the second part deals with the visits to Zhengzhou (capital city of Henan Province, China) and Beijing, China.
Part One – Hong Kong
Each year, the CSCE HKB organizes an Annual Dinner that is the most important event of the Branch. In Oct. 2013, CSCE President, Reg Andres was unable to go to Hong Kong for their Annual Dinner due to work commitments for his company. As a result, he asked the CSCE SVP Tony Begin to represent him at the HKB Annual Dinner, held on Oct. 31, 2013 in Hong Kong. Two executives of the CSCE, Brian
Burrell and Todd Chan were also invited to the Annual Dinner and all of them participated in the two main activities organized by the HKB.
Technical Workshop on October 30, 2013
A technical workshop was organized by the HKB executives one day before the HKB Annual Dinner and it was held at HK Polytechnic University from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Oct. 30, 2013. The workshop was entitled “Canada Builds”: Canadian Civil Engineering and Related Projects – Knowledge and Expertise Sharing. It is the intention of the HKB executives to hold many more workshops under the general title of “Canada Builds” in the coming years with lecturers from Canada.
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1. “Building Information Modeling (BIM) for West Kowloon
High-speed Rail Terminus Project by Ronan Collins (a colleague of Tony at the CANAM Division in HK)
2. “BuildMaster for Canadian Commercial Projects” by Tony
Begin
3. “Floods and Climate Change” by Brian Burrell
The workshop was attended by about 100 undergrad and graduate students, professors, and practising engineers. It was a large benefit to CSCE HKB members and students.
CSCE Canada and CSCE HKB executives’ meeting
After the Workshop, the HKB Chair Paul Pang and his HKB executives invited Tony, Brian, and Todd for dinner in which a meeting was also held for about 2 hours to discuss matters and issues related to the CSCE HKB.
The executives from CSCE HKB: Paul Pang (HKB Chair), Kelvin Cheung (HKB Vice-Chair), Brian Wong (Technical Committee Chair), Tak Cheong Kan (Honorary Secretary), Ben Chan (Membership
Committee Chair) and George Cheng (Student Affairs Committee Chair) The main points of discussions are listed below:
1. The relationship between the CSCE Canada and the HKB was
discussed.
2. From discussions, we got a better understanding of the HKB
requirements and expectations.
3. It was agreed that the CSCE HKB is quite different from a CSCE
section in Canada; however, the relationship between the VP – International and the Branch did not appear to be too clear to some HKB executives.
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4. The concept of one society, two associations was raised and Todd
Chan suggested that this kind of organizational structure may be referred to in taking care of some of the ways HKB executives manage their finances and how they set up their membership classes. [It would be a good idea to address this in the draft MOU (in preparation) between the CSCE Canada and HKB.]
5. HKB executives raised the issue of requesting a seat on the CSCE
Board of Directors with voting rights. (At the present time, CSCE HKB has a seat on the board without voting rights and this
arrangement will expire in June 2014.) Todd Chan asked the HKB executives to make a formal request to the CSCE Board for
consideration at the Dec. 1, 2013 meeting to be held in Montreal.
6. HKB executives asked CSCE Canada to send more lecturers to
Hong Kong for workshops or seminars that will benefit their
members. Todd Chan replied that CSCE Canada would try to send 2 or 3 lecturers to Hong Kong each year when they are passing through HK to China for technical exchanges or projects.
Arrangements would be made for them to stay in Hong Kong for a short period of time to give lectures related to Canadian
engineering.
Hong Kong Branch Annual Dinner on Oct. 31, 2013
This is the most important annual event of the HKB and the 2013
Annual Dinner was attended by more than 200 people including most of the HKB members and some of the most influential civil engineers in Hong Kong, such as the president of HKIE, the director of Water Supplies of the HKSAR government, the LegCo Member of the
Engineering Functional Constituency (similar to a parliament member in Canada) and many civil engineering department chairs at local
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universities. It was an excellent opportunity to promote the CSCE Canada at this important annual event of the HKB.
At the dinner, the CSCE SVP Tony Begin gave a very good speech to the dinner participants and the Director of Water Supplies, Ma Lee-tak made a presentation entitled “Sustainable Management of Hong Kong’s Water Resources”.
During the dinner, scholarships were given to a few student members and some HKB awards were given to members who made significant contributions to the branch in the past year.
The dinner was a very successful and enjoyable event that was enjoyed by all.
Part Two – China
Meeting with the Henan Provincial Branch of the China Civil Engineering Society (CCES) – Nov. 4, 2013
This meeting was in fact a joint meeting with the Henan Provincial Branch of CCES and the Henan Provincial Design and Research
Institute of Urban Planning because the top leaders of this institute are also senior executives of the provincial CCES branch.
The provincial branch was celebrating its 60th anniversary this year and
at the meeting, they expressed thanks to the CSCE for the letter of congratulations signed by our president Reg Andres and sent to them a few weeks ago. The main purpose of the meeting was to further
strengthen the relationship between our two organizations and hopefully, with their contacts in nearby provincial CCES branches, they will be able to help us recruit new CSCE Institutional Members – International
(CSCE IMI). On their 60th anniversary, they have published a few books
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celebrate their important milestone. They kindly gave CSCE a set of books and offered to ship them to the CSCE Montreal office. The book
for the celebration of their 60th anniversary will be published in Dec.
2013 and they promised to send a copy to the CSCE. (Note: one of the pictures in this book shows Gordon Jin, CSCE President at that time, visiting them in 2010.)
Meeting with the China Civil Engineering Society in Beijing – November 6, 2013 (morning)
Participants: CSCE – Tony Begin, Brian Burrell, Todd Chan and Bing Chen; CCES – Yang, Zhongcheng (VP and Secretary General), CUI, Jianyou (Deputy Secretary General), FENG, Dabing (standing board member), Ms. LI Dan (Director, Dept. of Academic Activities), Dr. LI, Yingbin and Ms. BAO, Xue Song (Dept. of Academic Activities) CSCE has worked with the CCES on many projects for about 30 years, but in the last 2 years there have not been many exchanges. In Aug.
2013, a new CCES secretary-general was appointed and he is also one of the VPs of the CCES. Therefore, it was an excellent opportunity for us to meet with their new secretary-general and to introduce the CSCE SVP (Tony) and the new CSCE IAC Liaison for China (Bing Chen, who
happened to be in Beijing at the time of the meeting) to the CCES senior staff in their Beijing office.
A few items were discussed:
1. The first technical exchange agreement between our two long-time
sister engineering societies was signed in 1983 and some of the terms in the agreement are no longer valid. We all agreed that a new agreement should be signed in the near future. In fact, the CSCE IAC was considering a new CSCE – CCES Agreement a
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few months ago and therefore, we were able to give a copy of the draft agreement to the CCES to review in the coming weeks.
2. We discussed different ways for our two societies to cooperate in
technical matters. The idea of exchanging web-based technical contents was discussed. Bing Chen will follow up on this.
3. China has been doing many major civil engineering projects in
recent years and this information will be very useful to CSCE members. Brian asked the secretary-general for some information on some of the well-known projects in China. The Secretary
General offered us a few very nice publications on Chinese prize- winning civil engineering projects undertaken in the last 10 years. Due to the weight of these books, Tony and Brain only accepted 4 copies of the books published in the last 2 years.
4. Brian took the opportunity to promote the CSCE 2014 Annual
Conference to be held in Halifax and an invitation was extended to the CCES at the meeting.
Meeting with the Chinese Hydraulic Engineering Society (CHES) – November 7, 2013 afternoon and dinner hosted by CHES
A meeting was held with the CHES to discuss two important activities to be undertaken in 2014. The first one is the May 2014 Water Workshop to be funded by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) in China and supported by the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources and CHES. The second one is the joint CSCE/CHES International Water Conference to be held at the end of Oct. 2014 in Tianjin (about 200 km east of Beijing). This joint conference will be completely funded by CHES. Many details for these two major 2014 activities were discussed at the meeting and a great deal of work will have to be done in coming months by some CSCE members in Canada,
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in particular by IAC members and the CSCE IAC Special Envoy to China (Prof. Jeanne Huang now teaching at Tianjin University).
After the meeting, a very nice dinner was hosted by the CHES President.
Concluding Remarks
Benefits to the CSCE:
Further strengthening of relationships with CSCE HKB, CHES and CCES (provincial and national)
Having face-to-face discussions on detailed work and plans for the two 2014 activities with CHES
Better understanding of the requirements and needs of CSCE HKB Workshop (3 lectures on Oct. 30, 2013) for the benefits of the HKB members and others in HK
Promotion of the CSCE Institutional Membership – international (CSCE IMI) to a few potential institutions in HK and China (2 new IMIs
members signed up in China during the trip)
Expenses to the CSCE – about 35% of each person’s trip expenses came from CSCE
