Chairman's
Message
It is my great honor to be elected as the Chairman of MC Division for Session 2008/2009. I am really delighted to have the chance to take up such an important position and work with the Committee to serve our members.
Mechanical, Marine and Chemical Engineering are long regarded as a profession requiring diversified knowledge, exposure and experience. Our competent engineers are involved in almost all industries and have achieved a lot of success. You could easily notice that our engineers play a key role in many sectors across the society. However, our identity, particularly in Hong Kong under the title of "Mechanical and Chemical Engineer" becomes unclear. Not many people in the society understand what we are doing and what we have achieved. In this connection, the first mission I want to achieve in this Session is to unify the strength of the Division by bringing the professionals of mechanical, marine and chemical disciplines closely together to enhance our identity through organising joint activities. In this respect, I will call for assistance from our Discipline Representatives in Mechanical, Marine and Chemical Disciplines to work together to bring the Division to a new level of development.
In fact, with the great works accomplished by our Past Chairmen and previous Committees, it is encouraging that the Division has the momentum to advance itself and provides a wide range of activities for our members. In the last Session, we established the Automotive Engineering Special Interests Group which provided a platform for experts in this area to share their expertise with other HKIE members through organising seminars and technical visits and made contributions to the society through participating in the technical advisory committee. In this year, I would like to further extend this effort by exploring the possibility of setting up other special interests groups within our Division, which is my second mission.
The third as well as the most important mission I have to accomplish in this Session is to work closely with the Committee to plan and launch a programme to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Division. I plan to move ahead on this important task on two fronts.
On one hand, we plan to organise a regional scale conference in advanced transportation technologies and associated pollution control in April 2009 which would create a golden opportunity for our members to share their experience in this hot topic. On the other hand, we also plan to organise a series of celebration activities throughout this Session, for example, to name a few of them:
1. MC 30th Anniversary Dragon Boat Racing Cup held in end of May 2008.
2. Joint University Mechanical Engineering Football Cup to be held in October 2008.
3. Participation of the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon 2009.
4. MC 30th Anniversary Dinner to be held in May 2009.
5. Issue of special edition MC Newsletter, etc.
All in all, we foresee a very busy year for the whole Committee and our supporters. Nevertheless, our activities would not be successful without your support. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to appeal to your continuous support to the Division as what you did in the past. And I am sure that the new Committee will join me to exert our utmost efforts to make the Division one of the most active Divisions in the Institution at its 30th Anniversary and, most importantly, to serve our members as good as we could in the years to come.
Ir Barry LEE Chi Hong
Chairman, Mechanical, Marine, Naval Architecture & Chemical Division
Session 2008/2009
