Defining a Sustainable Future for Hong Kong: A Q&A with Giuseppe Mollica

A growing city, Hong Kong is a major international business, trade and financial hub in Asia. Jacobs has a legacy of more than 50 years in Hong Kong, helping accelerate the city’s vision to create a lasting, positive legacy for generations to come. 

With our design, engineering, program management and consulting and advisory capabilities, we’re solving major problems the city is facing—from urbanization, climate change, logistics and digital proliferation to security, water scarcity and challenges around investment partnerships and mega infrastructure.

This series of Q&As introduces you to our visionaries helping realize Hong Kong’s sustainability and resilience goals. 

In this article, meet Giuseppe Mollica, one of our technical directors, who discusses his journey and how we’re helping shape Hong Kong’s future.

Hi Giuseppe. Can you tell us a bit about your role, background and what you’re most passionate about?

As a Technical Director based in the Jacobs Hong Kong office, I lead the delivery of top-notch technical and operational solutions for large local utilities.

I bring more than two decades of expertise in leading design and engineering initiatives for energy and water projects across Asia, the Middle East and Europe. In my career, I’ve brought to life energy projects, including clean energy projects and enabling the shift from fossil fuels. I’ve also led water and wastewater projects, including sludge incineration, organic waste, water treatment and conveyance systems.

I’m passionate about ensuring the best possible outcomes for everyone involved. To achieve this, my approach to project delivery focuses on energy efficiency, operational enhancement, footprint optimization and design life extension. This helps create a win-win situation for all parties involved, including us as professionals, the company, the client, and the environment.

Can you discuss the top infrastructure-related opportunities in growing cities like Hong Kong and how Jacobs is helping to address these opportunities to transform the way the people live, work and play? 

As cities grow and their population expands, meaningful infrastructure opportunities in energy, water and waste emerge. This is true for Hong Kong as well. 

Let me expand: one of the opportunities lies in the field of power generation. To create a zero-carbon future, Hong Kong is transitioning toward lower carbon avenues, which includes building high-efficiency gas-fired plants. 

One of the important components of Hong Kong’s energy transition is the China Light and Power’s (CLP’s) D2 Project. The project involves building a high-efficiency 650-megawatt combined cycle power plant, for which we provided front end engineering design and owner’s engineer consultancy services. D2 project, the second new gas-fired generation unit at Black Point Power Station, is set to play an important role in retiring older coal-fired generation units at Castle Peak A Power Station in the next few years. 

As the Project Manager, I’m glad to support this project that will contribute to reducing the carbon intensity of CLP’s power supply and consequently mark another milestone in Hong Kong’s low carbon journey.

The other major opportunity is to ensure a sustainable and secure water supply and wastewater disposal system to support several planned new developments as well as projects that involve modernizing existing infrastructure.

Advancing this opportunity, I’m glad to lead the delivery of the first full scale digital twin for water treatment plants in Hong Kong, the Siu Ho Wan Water Treatment Works Near-Real-Time Operation Simulation System.. Our team is dedicated to achieving a successful outcome for this project and ensuring energy savings, equipment life extension and safer and smoother plant operations. The solutions we’re  implementing can serve as a model to be replicated in similar facilities.

The third factor is building a robust waste management infrastructure for now and generations to come, which needs to progress toward incineration and recycling processes.

By addressing these opportunities, Hong Kong can maintain its status as a world-class metropolis while shaping a sustainable and clean environment for generations to come. I’m glad to be part of the team at Jacobs that’s helping deliver critical outcomes linked to these infrastructure opportunities and beyond, and paving the way for a smarter, more connected and sustainable future for this rapidly growing city.

From a technical director’s lens what are the top three factors crucial to the success of projects? 

The most crucial factor is working closely with clients in alignment with our values and vision, understanding their challenges, needs and priorities and leveraging our expertise to help solve problems and add value to projects.

Next, creating a dedicated multidisciplinary Jacobs project team comprising professionals with the required expertise and attitude is essential to ensure the success of projects. 

Last but not least, building and retaining specialized teams with critical competencies and know-how is essential. This enables us to provide clients with the best solutions and extend support for various complex projects.

At Jacobs, we do things right. Can you expand on what this value means to you and how it extends to co-creating solutions with clients?

For me, doing things right means acting for the betterment of society and delivering environmental and safety outcomes through innovative projects and technologies. 

In recent years, there’s been increasing awareness about the impact of climate change, resulting in a strong push toward sustainable development that takes public health and safety into account. With these factors in perspective, clients, especially public utilities, are increasingly focusing on digital transformation, energy efficiency, safety and innovative technologies. That’s where we come in – we work with our clients to develop and deliver solutions to create a better, safer and sustainable future for our people and planet.

What’s your proudest career moment?

The proudest moment of my career has been contributing to shaping Hong Kong’s waste-to-energy journey with the successful operation of T-Park, a sludge treatment facility in Hong Kong. It was a challenging project, the largest of its kind in the region and with an iconic architecture. I led the mechanical and process team of the project from the initial concept design to post-commissioning activities, and therefore, I have a deep connection with this facility.

What do you enjoy most about being part of #OurJacobs?

As a project manager with client-facing responsibilities, what really makes my job easier and enjoyable is our team’s professionalism and deep technical knowledge, which is also highly appreciated by our clients. It’s inspiring to work together towards the common objective of challenging existing practices to ensure better future operation and aiming higher as a team. All this makes me happy to be part of #OurJacobs.