Daniel Lam Chun: the Hong Kong boss who took crisis management to a new level

On the ninth day of his tenure as Urban Renewal Authority managing director, Daniel Lam Chun stepped into the Legislative Council to report on his organisation's work, ready to respond to criticism it had put profit before its social mission.

He had just taken over from Iris Tam Siu-ying, who had abruptly resigned citing conflicts with the statutory body's chairman, Victor So Hing-woh, over its direction. She had cautioned her colleagues against "acting as a developer". With Tam's departure hitting the headlines, Lam vowed to rebuild trust among different parties in the organisation when he assumed office last month.

It was déjà vu for Lam, 69, a veteran building surveyor with extensive experience in public affairs. The last time he was involved in a high-profile dispute among the top management of a public body was nine years ago, when he was property director at the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, a government-owned entity which was later merged with the MTR Corporation. He was one of the company's five senior managers who signed a petition forcing its chairman, Michael Tien Puk-sun, to quit.

The two men met again in Legco, sitting on opposite sides in the meeting venue.

"Mr Daniel Lam, you also sat on the board of directors [of the KCRC] back then. I guess you still remember that, right? It's a small world and we meet again," Tien, now a lawmaker, told Lam.

Lam responded with a laugh when asked about this repeat encounter with his former boss in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

"Ha ha ha … Well, he spared me. He did target me. Even in the KCRC days, I found Michael to be an intelligent person although his objectives might not be our objectives. But his appearance at the KCRC actually brought a lot of … not upheavals, but a lot of opportunities for those of us sitting in the comfort zone to rethink what we were doing."

Differences of opinion were common in any organisation, Lam said, just like in the latest row. "This happens in many organisations. I was on the [URA] board for seven years and I found we always discussed matters openly."

Lam is taking up the URA's leadership for 10 months, while the government seeks a successor through open recruitment.

As chairman of the Housing Authority's building committee from 1996 to 2001, he was one of those quizzed over a scandal involving short-piling at Home Ownership Scheme projects in 1999. The incident led to Legco censuring three senior personalities involved with the authority and the resignation of one of them, Rosanna Wong Yick-ming.

"Even now, I'm still using the short-piling incident in my class presentations to students … I was questioned by Legco's special investigation panel for 19 hours. I just take it now as a good lesson," said Lam, who is an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong.

On other occasions, Lam took on the role of reformer. In 2000, he chaired a committee in charge of a Housing Authority open design competition aimed at building the city's first environmentally friendly public housing estate. But the plan was scrapped in 2003 after the government decided to stop constructing HOS flats.

Towards the end of Lam's term at the KCRC, he launched a large-scale review of the design of buildings planned along the West Rail system and at Mong Kok station in a bid to improve local air ventilation. But the initiative was set aside after the merger of the two railway corporations in 2007 - a move he openly opposed.

He remains proud of the former railway operator he served.

"Eventually I think the KCRC proved itself to be a reasonably good institution. It built West Rail, the East Rail extension and the Ma On Shan system. None of these projects was one day late, and they were all within budget. So that's the KCRC!"

So does that provide any lessons for the MTR Corporation, which is facing serious delays and cost overruns on several of its projects? He smiled and said: "I won't comment on what's happening now."

Lam started his career as a trainee draftsman at Hongkong Land in 1965 and was later trained as a building surveyor. "At that time there were no degree courses [in those fields] in Hong Kong. The degree course leading to building surveying was one of the courses I helped to start in Hong Kong many years later … in the 1970s."

He lamented a drop in standards over the years. "A lot of professionals either work in government institutions, where they have a comfortable job ... or in the private sector, where professionals nowadays compete with each other on cost."

He also referred to what he considered a decline in professionalism in Legco.

"The fact that you have functional constituencies is the best thing in the world. Professionals are there to give unbiased opinion and knowledge. But if you look at the past 17 or 18 years, you find very few of these people standing up and proposing legislation to improve society ... So there is an outcry for the elimination of functional constituencies," Lam said.

One of the things he would like to see lawmakers tackle is an overhaul of the outdated Buildings Ordinance.

But he said he would not consider running for Legco. "I'm not a political man. I find it hard to compromise. I don't think I can make a good politician.

"I have been working in arbitration, where you look at the law and facts and then make a decision. You try to decide whether something is black or white. There is no grey area. But in politics, there are lots of grey areas and you don't usually have black or white."

Profile: Daniel Lam Chun

Professional qualifications
Chartered building surveyor, chartered arbitrator

Jobs and public service
Chairman of building committee, Housing Authority (1996-2001)
Chairman, Hong Kong Institute of Arbitrators (1997-2000)
Property director, KCRC (2000-2007)
Honorary professor, Real Estate and Construction Department, University of Hong Kong (2006- present)
Executive director, Recas Strategic Development Investment Management (2008-2015)
Non-executive director, Urban Renewal Authority (2008-June 2015)
Managing director, URA (June 2015-present)