The Hong Kong Chapter, Society of Fire Protection Engineers

1. Society of Fire Protection Engineers 2007 The Hong Kong Chapter, Society of Fire Protection Engineers 7th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science & TechnologySeptember 20 - 22, 2007, Hong Kong

2. 1. INTRODUCTION • Hong Kong Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers opened officially in October 2002. • An Inaugural SFPE Hong Kong Chapter Meeting was held on 3 October 2002, 6:45 pm to 9:30 pm, at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. • Wide range of participants, about 100, from the building industry, academies and government officials attended.

3. The meeting comprised welcoming note to the establishment of the Hong Kong Chapter and three technical talks on: • “Birth of the fire safety engineering” by Prof. Chow, • “Practical examples using fire engineering” by Dr. L. Zhao and • “Heat release rate and flame spreading” by Miss C.W. Leung. • Ms K.H. Almand from the Headquarter gave a half-an-hour talk on the History of SFPE.

4. The Inaugural Meeting 3 October, 2002

5. FIRE ENGINEERING DISCIPLINE HONG KONG INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERS (HKIE) • Fire Discipline of HKIE has been launched since January 2006. • Two of the Chapter officers (Prof. Chow and Dr. Yuen) are members of HKIE Task Force for the establishment of Fire Discipline. • The Chapter is going to liaise with HKIE Fire Discipline to have representatives under SFPE-HKC. • In complementary.

6. 2. CHAPTER OFFICERS • The Officers serving the Hong Kong Chapter Committee in year 2006 to the present are as follows: • Academics : 3 • Consulting engineers : 6 • Government officers : 1 • Retired fire officer : 1 Total : 11

8. The Chapter Meeting 28 November, 2006

9. 3. CHAPTER OFFICERS MEETINGS • Since opening of the Hong Kong Chapter, numerous Chapter meetings were held. Aimed to be held on a quarterly basis. • A series of CPD lectures and seminars were held. • In 2003, from April to September, Hong Kong was suffering from the SARS. Most public gathering events including seminars and talks, if were scheduled during that period had been postponed to other dates.

10. Meetings held

11. CPD Courses/Seminars offered

14. Workshop CPD Activities

15. 2007 Estimate : Fellow: 1 Members: • Associates: • Affiliates: • Students: > 60 > 90 4. MEMBERSHIP • Up to March, 2004, there are total 192 Members (Member, Affiliate, Student) under the Hong Kong Chapter, • 110 distributed as : Members: 33 • Associates: 0 • Affiliates: 48 • Students: 29 • Unsorted: 82 • __________________________________ • In 2006, the Chapter submitted 2 fellows nomination and one has successfully approved. (Not easy to search from the SFPE Webpage!) No clerical resources!

16. 5. CHINESE TRANSLATION OF SFPE TITLE • A numbers of Chinese translations of SFPE, which will be used as official title in Chinese have been proposed and discussed. • It has been agreed that the official Chinese name is: 防火工程師學會

17. 6. GOOD CHAPTER PRACTICES • Criteria for good chapter practices • Attending SFPE meetings • Nominating fellows in local chapter • Offering CPD and visits • Frequency of meetings • The Chapter has submitted the Self Evaluation Form for SFPE Chapter Recognition Award for the period July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007.

18. COMMUNICATION WITH • HEADQUARTER & OTHER • CHAPTERS • Chapter President had attended the SFPE Chapters Presidents Meeting held in Ellicot City, Baltimore, US on Oct 15, 2006. • Setting up a regional SFPE office for better serving the members in the Far East is under consideration. • Hong Kong Chapter has expressed support to set up the office in Hong Kong and detailed office arrangement could be sorted out at later time upon confirmation of the location of regional office.

19. ADVANCING LOCAL FIRE • SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY • The Chapter wrote two letters, one to Buildings Department and one to Fire Services Department, on January 2007 which is to seek participation and/or representation for any task group/ committee in relation to fire safety. • We are waiting for reply.

20. 9. FUNDING • At present, clerical work (e.g. preparing and mailing of leaflet for the CPD courses) for running the Hong Kong Chapter is supported by Research Centre for Fire Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, earnt from consultancy. • Considered to be shared by PolyU and SFPE-HKC by buying clerical man-hour from PolyU, once there are some funding generated. • In the Pacific SFPE Chapters meeting at Daegu, Korea, March 2004, there were suggestions to get some small funding from local members on sponsoring administrative fee.

21. 10. JOINT FUNCTION WITH OTHER PROFESSIONAL ORGANISATIONS • It has been agreed within the Chapter, that the general rules for any collaborated activities with other professional organizations (e.g. HKIE, IFE, CIBSE, ASHRAE, etc.) in future would be as follows: • Speakers’ profile and topic were needed to be reviewed by the counterpart before committing the collaboration • Discount for admission ticket would be the same for the collaborated organizations • The hosted organization would bear all cost/profit for the collaborated activity provided that counterpart(s) won’t involve in general organization work (e.g. registration, venue, speakers, etc.)

22. 11. ACTIVITES • Fire Guangdong 2003, 4-7 August 2003 • A book “Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Industrial Fire Protection” was kindly donated by the Author, Mr. T.F. Barry to the SFPE Hong Kong Chapter. • SFPE members can borrow the book from the Chapter Committee up to a period of two weeks. • The following activities are planned for the Hong Kong Chapter: • Continuously organize CPD courses to promote fire safety engineering • Explore the possibility in organizing visits to fire laboratory for full-scale burning facilities. • Seek funding for running the Chapter activities