CIBSE UK has rewarded highly experienced engineer, and Chair of IHEEM’s Hong Kong Branch, Dr PL Yuen, for his ‘exceptional, outstanding, and distinguished service to CIBSE and the wider industry’, by conferring on him its highest accolade – a Gold Medal.
Dr Yuen – who received the Medal by CIBSE President, Fiona Cousins, at the CIBSE President’s Awards Dinner held on 11 October 2024 at the Savoy London – has given long service to the Institution as the past Chair of the CIBSE HK Region, and is a past Board Trustee, and past Vice-President of CIBSE UK. In addition to being Chair of IHEEM’s Hong Kong Branch, he is an honorary Fellow of the Energy Institute UK (EI). In awarding him the Gold Medal, CIBSE said Dr Yuen was ‘an individual recognised as a leading and highly respected figure who has made a significant advancement in the discipline of building services engineering’.
Career-wise, Dr Yuen started working in the Hong Kong Government’s Department for Public Hospital Construction, Operation, and Maintenance before joining the Hospital Authority in the 1990s. He is currently the senior manager of the Hospital Authority overseeing the design, construction, and operation of public hospital building services. Under his stewardship hospitals in Hong Kong have adopted a number of innovative measures to save energy and lower carbon emissions.
During the CIBSE President’s Dinner Dr Yuen was invited to share his wealth of engineering experiences over the years working on Hong Kong’s public healthcare infrastructure – from ‘an era with primitive design’, to today’s modern hospital settings. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, meanwhile, he designed and delivered negative pressure ventilated isolation facilities, supporting the management of infectious disease control. Addressing attendees on receiving the award he said he felt it not only recognised his individual achievement, but also his contribution to advancing the engineering profession for future generations.
In Hong Kong, Dr Yuen is the Past-President of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, and currently the Chair of the HK Engineers Registration Board, while internationally he is both the Chairman of the International Engineering Technologist Agreement (IETA), and the Seoul Accord, and a Governing Group Member of the International Engineering Alliance (IEA).
