Friday, March 22, 1974
5 -
CLOSER RELATIONSHIP URGED
Between Government And University Engineers
The Secretary for the Environment, Mr. James Robson, this evening
called for closer relationship between practising structural engineers and
their counterparts at the University of Hong Kong and the Polytechnic.
Addressing the annual dinner of the Structural Engineers Institution (Hong Kong Branch) at Hong Kong Club, he discussed how the engineers and
the universities could help the community in its present economic constraints.
The universities, o felt could be more involved in investigations
and research into problems which at present may be unique to Hong Kong but
which, in due course, could be of value to the rest of the world.
Mr. Robson noted that Hong Kong had become something of a haven
for highly-paid engineering consultants from other countries. But while
he regarded this as a healthy reflection of the resolute pace Hong Kong had
adopted in its forward planning, he wondered how much of this expertise was
brushing off and being retained in Hong Kong.
Commissioning of consultants, he explained, was a long dram out
process and participation of the university or the polytechnic in consultants*
activities would require them to meet the time tables agreed between the
government and its agents, and hence require a discipline of time usually
absent from pure research.
"If there were closer working contacts between the various faculties
at the universities and their Government counterparts, it should be possible,
while drawing up the consultants' briefs, to consider whether the universities
had any part to play.
/""They might