It’s not just bricks and mortar — construction is a people’s business, says Gammon chief
Gammon Construction’s chief executive Thomas Ho has been named as winner of the Executive Award at the DHL/SCMP Hong Kong Business Awards for 2016.
●Other winners from this year's DHL/SCMP Hong Kong Business Awards will be profiled in the week following the awards dinner on December 1.
From Central Hong Kong's Three Pacific Place to Cathy Pacific's airport terminal, Gammon Construction has left a permanent mark all over the city.
But surprisingly, its chief executive in the city Thomas Ho, first got into the construction industry almost by accident.
He stumbled upon Hong Kong Polytechnic's Building Technology and Management course, and admits he knew little about the industry – but thought it sounded interesting.
It was the start of Ho's career in Hong Kong's ongoing, and still rapid construction industry – beginning as an on-site engineer with local contractor Hsin Chong in 1978, before moving to Gammon in 1997, and then becoming chief executive in 2005.
His first boss Geoffrey Yeh, who he describes as a “visionary and passionate about training graduates”, made sure all its trainees spent as much time on-site as possible, to give them as full an understanding as possible of the processes.
But maybe more importantly, it gave Ho hands-on experience, of what was a highly competitive market in the time.
