Mr Kevin O’BRIEN joined Balfour Beatty, a shareholder of Gammon, in Hong Kong in 1996 and moved to Gammon in 2004 where he held a number of senior roles. He was then appointed the Chief Executive of the Jardine Engineering Corporation (JEC) in 2018, where he was responsible for all businesses across Asia. He re-joined Gammon as the Chief Executive in 2021. He has over 30 years of extensive management experience in the construction and engineering industry covering both the private and public sectors. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and a Member of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors.

Mr O’Brien is a true believer in the apprenticeship as he started his career as an apprentice. He values apprenticeship training and thus actuates his organisations to support and recruit apprentices.

Since 2006, Mr O’Brien has contributed significantly to foster the relationship between Gammon and the VTC, and provided sage advice to his organisations about the collaboration with the VTC. Gammon has benefited the VTC students through various kinds of support, including sponsorships for “Youth Construction Discovery Challenge” and “WorldSkills Hong Kong Competition”, and scholarships through the VTC Student Development Foundation and Gammon Scholarship in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management.

Mr O’Brien was appointed a Member of the VTC Estates Committee (2017-2018). He has actively supported the collaboration between industry and the VTC to groom construction and engineering professionals for Hong Kong. He is an advocate of workplace training and has provided valuable insights to enrich the VTC programmes.

He champions institution-industry collaboration in which staff development opportunities offered by Jardines’ engineering businesses would bring home to the VTC teaching staff the latest technology development and requirement of the industry, and the programmes jointly developed would refresh the currency and practicality of the content to respond to the industry’s needs. The quality staff attachment opportunities sharpen the skills of the VTC Engineering Discipline colleagues in applying advanced digital technology to real-life projects and challenge their knowledge from a practical perspective in the digital construction era.