Interview with Ms CHANG Yuk Kam, Patricia

Q: As a representative of the Hong Kong Institute of Housing and Chairlady of the QBA 2026 Organizing Committee, what is the most critical detail in property management that is often overlooked after project completion, yet essential to building quality?

A: The most critical yet frequently overlooked details revolve around long-term maintenance and cleansing accessibility. Facilities Management (FM) teams are increasingly involved during the early design stage to advise on these operational requirements. While a newly completed development may look architecturally stunning, practical difficulties often arise during daily operations if maintenance access is ignored. 

For instance, high-level features like multi-story chandeliers or elevated facade lighting often require tens of thousands of dollars in scaffolding just to clean or replace a bulb, placing an unreasonable financial burden on property owners. In residential projects, poor access design, such as forcing maintenance workers to traverse private residential units and bedrooms to clean communal podiums, creates severe operational friction between management and residents. 

Beyond cleansing access, misplaced or missing maintenance access panels for mechanical and electrical (M&E) systems remain a persistent issue. While design updates cannot eliminate every operational constraint, early interdisciplinary communication ensures these recurring defects are minimized before handover. 

Q: This year's theme is "Smartly We Build | Sustainably We Thrive | Inclusively We Lead." From a housing management perspective, how can smart building technologies (e.g., IoT sensors, smart utility meters) truly deliver tangible benefits to residents in day-to-day operations?

A: Smart technologies deliver true value when they reduce human error, streamline operations, and proactively protect lives and assets: 

• Automated Utility Metering: Digital smart meters eliminate the need for utility staff to manually log readings in hot, confined plant rooms, reducing physical labor and human recording errors. 

• IoT Flood Alarm Systems: Given the rise of extreme weather events, early-detection water-leak sensors in critical plant and switch rooms allow management to intervene immediately. This prevents catastrophic damage to expensive mechanical equipment, avoids major resident disruptions, and saves significant repair and insurance costs. 

• Safety & Air Quality Sensors: Deploying IoT devices, such as air purification sensors in public restrooms or fall-detection sensors in unstaffed 24-hour clubhouse gyms, which enable control centers to dispatch assistance instantly during emergencies, directly safeguarding lives and elevating user safety. 

Q: With your extensive experience in housing management, what are the most common design-stage oversights that create challenges for later operation and maintenance in Hong Kong's residential projects? Could you share some memorable positive or negative examples?

A: Practical operational needs are frequently omitted in design stage. 

A prime example is clubhouse HVAC design in modern residential developments. Operating an entire central air-conditioning system late into the night solely to serve a 24-hour gym facility is highly inefficient. By communicating operational needs to architects and M&E engineers during the design stage, FM teams can request independent, dedicated cooling systems alongside standalone access doors. This allows specific amenities to run comfortably at night without wasting energy across the wider complex. 

Bridging these gaps requires architects and facilities managers to collaborate early, balancing aesthetic expression with operational efficiency. 

Q: With QBA expanding eligibility to non-local projects from the Greater Bay Area and overseas, what management concepts can Hong Kong learn from these external entries?

A: Expanding eligibility criteria has introduced high-caliber entries that demonstrate extraordinary detail in property management and smart execution. 

Submissions from Mainland cities like Shanghai showcase sophisticated centralized management systems, integrated climate controls (such as built-in underfloor heating tailored to local weather), and widespread adoption of robotics—including automated room-service delivery robots in hospitality and residential developments. 

Given Hong Kong’s high labor costs and acute hiring shortages in facilities management, observing how external markets leverage technology and regulatory support to automate daily workflows provides valuable insights for modernizing local operations and filling manpower gaps. 

Q: How can the Quality Building Award further strengthen its focus on human-centric metrics in its judging criteria in the future – for example, by incorporating softer indicators like user experience and community belonging?

A: Buildings are cold physical structures; human-centric design is about transforming them into warm, functional spaces for the people who use them. Evaluating human-centric quality requires looking beyond hard engineering to assess how a project enhances daily comfort, supports well-being, and fosters a sense of community belonging. 

A standout example of human-centric infrastructure is the Kai Tak District Cooling Plant No. 3, Sustainable Development Award of QBA 2026. Rather than requiring individual commercial buildings and shopping malls to allocate premium architectural space for their own noisy, heat-generating chiller plants, the project utilizes centralized underground cooling infrastructure. Delivering chilled water directly across the district eliminates urban heat pollution, frees up building footprints, and seamlessly serves the entire community. Moreover, more spaces can be free up for use as recreation purpose in the projects adopting central cooling system to enhance community cohesion.

Q: As a housing management professional, what do you think is the top priority for QBA in driving industry development?

A: The top priority must be fostering early interdisciplinary collaboration across all building stakeholders. The Quality Building Award unites ten distinct professional institutions, spanning architects, structural engineers, surveyors, developers, contractors, and facilities managers. 

True architectural quality is achieved when these groups communicate from project inception. As an industry architect once noted, completing a building is like delivering a newborn baby into the hands of the management team to nurture long-term. When all disciplines collaborate early to eliminate operational hurdles, the result is a truly efficient, sustainable, and high-quality development that serves its residents and community for generations.