Veteran engineer warns of deteriorating professional spirit in Hong Kong
Veteran engineer Edmund Leung Kwong-ho warns that a deterioration of professional spirit, not competence, is behind recent building and lift safety failures in Hong Kong. He calls for restoring old-fashioned trustworthiness and warns that penalties alone are weak deterrents when commercial pressures
A veteran engineer has warned that a gradual erosion of professionalism, rather than a lack of technical competence, may be behind a string of recent safety failures in Hong Kong. Edmund Leung Kwong-ho, writing in The Standard on 10 November 2026, cited cases including lifts that cannot operate smoothly in a hospital, housing-estate lifts missing vital fire-protection components, buildings missing steel reinforcements, and last year's Tai Po public housing fire.
Leung suggested that the established system governing professionals in Hong Kong has broken down. Under that system, professional institutions are responsible for ensuring good conduct at a level substantially higher than the law. The Police Force guards against breaches of the law, but society relies on professionals to operate above the legal minimum. Leung argued that this system has long been used not only for engineers but also for medical and legal professionals.
He noted that professionals undergo accredited education, structured training and interviews by experienced peers to confirm competence and ethical standards. However, he said the system breaks down when professionals compromise their judgement. The cause, he argued, is rarely lack of competence but more often cost-cutting to meet an artificially low budget or a desire to maximise monetary gain. Such individuals, he said, know they are treading past the limits of sound professional judgement but choose to ignore it, which is why they end up in court.
Leung said the increasing frequency of such breaches is worrying and suggests a systemic weakness. He questioned whether professional qualifications are still being duly assessed, though he said he saw no evidence of deterioration in the assessment process itself. He also doubted that the regulatory systems are weak, describing them as tried, true and continuously updated, sometimes to the point of being counterproductive. He warned that suggesting increased penalties likely falls into this category.
The engineer argued that instituting 100 per cent inspection for all systems would require huge, unaffordable resources. He called instead for an examination of why some professionals choose to ignore ethics and take risks, whether because of increasing commercial pressure or greed. He said he hoped the root cause could be found and old-fashioned trustworthiness restored to the profession.
