Otto Poon has a long association EMSD. The former President of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, former Governor of Friends of the Earth, current Chairman of the Energy Advisory Committee and member of the Council for Sustainable Development, and a successful businessman and professional, Mr Poon started his engineering career at EMSD in 1956 when he joined the then-E&M Office's second Trade Apprentice Scheme to learn the electrical and air-conditioning trade. Graduating in 1961, he was engaged by a major international company and subsequently seized an opportunity to work in London, where he obtained professional engineering qualifications and furthered his career before eventually returning to Hong Kong.

Mr Poon commends EMSD for its decision to turn an old building into its new headquarters without resorting to demolition, thus improving its immediate environment while reducing Hong Kong's overall construction waste and energy consumption. "I am all for the green cause," he says. "The conversion has set a good example for the community and is well worth the effort. I hope some of the derelict buildings we have in older districts like Kwun Tong, Tsuen Wan and Kowloon Bay will be revitalised in this way and help contribute to our environmental improvement."

A keen advocate of waste reduction, Mr Poon is particularly committed to the reduction of construction waste. He expresses concern that the issue of embedded energy is overlooked in Hong Kong, as is the energy life cycle cost, which measures the consumption of energy for renovating or constructing a facility as well as the consumption of energy for owning and operating it over its useful life. Mr Poon urges policymakers to create a quantitative energy benchmark and index for Hong Kong, via, for example, tracking all energy embedded in imported materials, including food and construction materials, so that sustainable development in Hong Kong may be more effectively measured, managed and benchmarked against the world's other major cities.

When it comes to evaluating EMSD's headquarters, Mr Poon is more qualified than most: he has witnessed EMSD move headquarters three times. "In the 1950s when I was an apprentice, E&M Office was headquartered in a now-demolished modest Victorian-style building in Wan Chai, near Johnston Road. I still recall that we would sneak out from time to time in the afternoon to have a cup of coffee and egg tarts at a place called 'Jackson' Coffee Shop. The Office moved during the period from 1958 to 1960 to Admiralty, near the dockyards, and then moved again to Caroline Hill in 1966. Now we come to the fourth incarnation of EMSD's headquarters - and it is an exemplary one for promoting sustainable development in Hong Kong."