Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): HKIE Debriefing Seminar on Insights from Israel on Innovation, Infrastructure & Investment

The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE) (YMC and CPDC jointly) organized debriefing seminar named “Insights from Israel on Innovation, Infrastructure & Investment” on 12^th July 2019. The HKIE-YMC Overseas Delegation is a sustainable programme that arouses young engineer’s potential in leadership and motivates the young ones’ vision to learn from overseas experiences. Israel has applied many innovative technologies to overcome the country’s challenges and enhance the quality of people’s life. She has a thriving start-up culture and has attracted a number of investment and partnerships in high-technology industries. The debriefing seminar aimed to share a 9-day trip to Israel and a year-long study result so as to propose some insight for Hong Kong development. I arrived the HKIE and took a photo.

During registration, a report of oversea delegation 2019 Israel was distributed.

In the beginning, Mr. Thomas Lam (CLP) was MC and introduced the program and speakers. He introduced the frame “Innovation • Infrastructure • Investment”.

The first speaker was Mr. Benny Cheung (Graduate Trainee, HK Electric) and his topic entitled “Innovation”. Firstly, he briefed Innovation as idea, creative thoughts, new imaginations of better solutions involved the practical implementation via the engineering process for problem solving.

Then he compared HK and Israel in education. Hong Kong has top university education and Israel has Israel Defence Force (IDF) which exposure to cutting edge technologies and intensive training. They experienced to address real live solution and flat hierarchy. And then Mr. Benny Cheung compared Closed Innovation to Open Innovation. He added to adopt open innovation that third party innovation facilitators (e.g. The Floor – Israel’s First Fintech Hub; CoCoon – HK coworking space) were needed.

Lastly, he briefed the industry 4.0 in Hong Kong and gave some insight from their study involved Education, Third Parties coordinator and Digital Manufacturing.

The second speaker was Mr. Tim F.T. Chan (Assistant Construction Officer, Hip Hing Construction Co. Ltd.) and his topic named “Infrastructure”. He said “Infrastructure is not only required to serve the basic needs of the citizens, but also provide them with more caring services with diversity.” In his talk, there are two case studies included Water Supply and Construction Industry to be discussed.

Mr. Tim Chan briefed the existing water supply in HK that 79% from Dongjang water and 21% from local. Then he presented the progress of Tseung Kwan O desalination plant which started from 2017 and expected completion in 2022. The forecasting sources of fresh water supply in 2020 for Hong Kong and Israel were showed in the following diagram.

And then Mr. Tim Chan briefed aobut Sorek Desalination Plant and shared some insights such as Press Center consisted of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane segment, high pressure (HP) pumping and energy recovery system; Large Membrane Diameter and Multiple Energy Source.

After that he briefed the second case study of Hong Kong Construction Industry. There are six major challenges in industry and they are significant volumes, high cost, poor mega-project performance and site safety, declining productivity and lack of innovation.

Mr. Chan also introduced some construction innovation in Hong Kong such as Integrated Digital Project Delivery (IDPD) included Building Information Modelling (BIM). Some solutions such as Innovation360 and Tech Hub were discussed. Some startups of Construction-Tech were demonstrated.

Finally, he concluded construction innovation ecosystem was a circle supported by Startups, Construction Companies, Investors, Software Vendors, Policy Maker and Regulatory.

The last speaker was Ms. Eileen Cheng (Graduate Trainee, ATAL) and her presentation topic was “Investment”. She firstly mentioned investment included capital (Government / Private) and intangible and value adding such as education and environmental.

Ms. Eileen Cheng briefed Hong Kong governmental funding and then introduced Israeli Government Funding Policy from Israel Innovation Authority. Their funding would up to 85% of the R&D costs for no equity in their incubators incentive program. All grants were based solely on technological excellence and business potential.

And then she briefed the Technology Transfer Centre – Yissum which provided legal support, strategically register the IP for researchers and identified business potential, etc.

Lastly, she stated impact investment that was not only financial return but also considered social and / or Environmental Impact. She presented a case study “ECOnrete” which was a combination of proprietary bio-enhancing concrete admixtures, complex surface textures and innovative science-based designs while improving structural performance and concluded that we need right partner, show case and proving for new ideas.