Jeremy CHAN

28/1/2021 Introduce me

The Landscape professional practice course kick off today with a section of self-introduction which gets me nervous without fully preparation. I realized how seldom I speak out in class or in other professional occasion to express my opinion and whenever I am not fully prepared.

I am being assigned to RED team with the topic ‘winning a project’. Originally the team wants to fight for the topic ‘where do you work?’ as we are more familiar with it, but we lost the chance unluckily. It can be more exciting tho to deal with an unknown topic.

We come up with some basic outlines of our format of presentation by looking back to the previous precedents, and we settled with the idea of question competition.

4/2/2021 Are you a landscape architect?

The first presentation team delivered their presentation with the same question contest format that we originally envisioned. The presentation is informative with comprehensive information about being a professional and what value a professional should uphold. Barry particular emphasized on the code of conduct of being a landscape architect and the liability of the title.

11/2/2021 Where do you work?

The second team packaged their presentation with a fun talent show to simulate the potential working path of six students from different backgrounds. Through the stories of the six candidates, the presentation brought up a discussion of working in public and private sectors in both Hong Kong and Mainland. The presentation provides great reference value to me to really think through where I see myself in the future after the master course.

The second part of lesson brought us to a virtual visit to the Earth Asia’s company. The company tour took us to have a glimpse of how they usually work on the project, from getting the project to finishing it. Also it provides a practical working path for students that are interested to work in the industry after graduation which is a very useful information.

25/2/2021 You are the boss

The third presentation provides an insight to what as a boss needs to take care of other then simply designing. There are multiple situations that a boss may need to tackle with such as finance, staff, marketing, risk management, etc. as the role takes more responsibility, every decision needs to be carefully examined. It also reflects how difficult it is to be a boss instead of one of the worker. Barry did not recommend us to kick start our own company as he thinks that accumulating experience is more important to us in this stage of our career. It makes total sense to me as an amateur, working in other company should be the best way to understand the industry.

The mini quiz of the course is a total savage as the questions are leaning on testing our thoughts instead of hard facts.

4/3/2021 Develop or control?

The presentation of the topic is focusing on the current ordinance framework in Hong Kong towards landscape related topics. The current land use planning system in Hong Kong involves multiple authorities which the ordinances are always interconnected between different departments. Development and control are therefore become a prolonged process or sometimes even contradictory between different perspectives. The administration work is therefore taking up so much time to the landscape companies.

18/3/2021 Winning a project

Today’s presentation is hold by us the REDs. The presentation flow is mainly smooth as we are able to catch up the pace to finish it within the timeframe. Our topic focuses on how to get a project from the market and later forming a contract with the client, as there are numerous opportunities but also competitors to race with us. Although there are some technical problem occurred during the video section, I considered the presentation as a success to convey the message to the rest of the fellers.

25/3/2021 Organizing a project

The presentation team is mainly focusing on the procurement part of the project. As a landscape architect, the procurement of a project is vital since it decides the relationship between designer, client and builder. The group used animation format to present the three major ways of procurement nowadays, the traditional procurement, design-build procurement, management contracting. As different procurement methods can fit in various scenarios as to fit in desirable requirements such as given timeframe and risk management.

8/4/2021 Delivering a project

A really interesting lecture hold by Barry, but the echo problem just ruined the whole presentation. As the technical problem is inevitable, we are divided into groups for role playing in the discuss section. It really helps us to clarify what different roles are playing in different part of the project.

The virtual visit to one of the site maintenance done by Urbis provides a deep insight of managing a long-term project in Hong Kong which is occasionally a landscape company will take on. These kind of project are usually thoroughly calculated and experimented before implementation as changes may cause great deficits to the company.

15/4/2021 Interview me

The discussion of this topic really help me out with the CV and the very first step of getting an interview of the desirable company. The CV should lean on writing up for specific company information instead of solely introducing yourself. And sometimes it needs to send to the right person rather then through the normal communication channel of the company.

29/4/2021 Hire me

The final section delivered is a group interview of the team and Barry. As we all expressed our opinion towards the works that we have done as a group, I particularly addressed the problem of delaying problems from sections to sections. It really caused a huge problem to our group since we are working completely fine on multiple aspects, but we just keen on letting certain topics to be unsolved such as the major presentation format. The indecisive attitude caused us a rushing timetable at the later period of our work.