Career Path Spotlight: Stephen Lai

At AECOM, employees are encouraged and supported to pursue career paths that best fit their unique capabilities, interests, and aspirations. Our Career Path Spotlight series takes you through the rewarding career journeys of our employees who have stepped out of their comfort zone and taken on new challenges to chart their own successful careers and growth. 

This time, we caught up with Stephen Lai, director of operations, Hong Kong, Asia, to learn how he progressed in both the business area leadership and client and growth management career paths.    

Hi Stephen. What do you do for AECOM?

I’m currently based in Hong Kong as senior vice president, director of operations, Hong Kong, and regional business line leader of Asia, Water.

Tell us about your career journey and how you got here.

I joined legacy company Maunsell in 1991 as a graduate engineer in the ports and marine business. After nearly two years of training on various design types of onshore marine structures, I was deployed to highway structure and roadworks projects to train as assistant resident engineer for another two and a half years. I obtained my professional qualifications in 1995.

In 1996, I joined another department in the design office as a chartered engineer and began working on urban development projects and multidisciplinary infrastructure design. After six years, I was handpicked by the senior management of a client to be a full-time resident engineer to manage and supervise the construction of a bridgework project I designed for them. Even though it was not my planned path at the time, with the support from my managing director and my supervisor, that role became my turning point to go beyond my comfort zone. I learned how to collaborate effectively with the site team, which would have not been possible if I was still working in the design office.

In 2006, I was invited by my mentor to join legacy company Metcalf & Eddy to work on a tunnelling project—a first for me! It was quite challenging but very rewarding as I got to collaborate closely with both the geotechnical and water teams to understand their key considerations and constraints. From this experience I learned that a competent project manager should be able to consolidate ideas, suggestions and proposals into the right context to deliver to the client. With the success of those projects, I was assigned to lead two more road tunnel projects. 

During that period, I was also progressively promoted from senior engineer to executive director from 2006 to 2013 and took up the regional business line leader role in 2014. That was a major steppingstone for me to broaden my exposure and to lead the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macau Greater Bay Area Growth Initiative and River Restoration Initiative across APAC in 2016 and oversee the civil infrastructure market in Greater China (Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan) in 2019.

I was then further promoted to vice president and senior vice president in 2019 and 2021, respectively. I’m currently overseeing the operation of HK sub-region, serving as a client lead for the Greater Bay Area growth initiative, and a regional business line leader of Asia, Water.

What would you say your proudest moment was?

My proudest moments are when I get to show my family, my wife and two sons, the infrastructure projects I worked on. I was able to show them some projects when we were vacationing in Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and even in Hong Kong. I’m so proud to be involved in delivering a better world and creating legacies for different cities.

What’s the best part of your job?

Working with people managers to support our team in making decisions, handling and resolving complicated issues—technical or not—and sharing gain and pain with them. With the size of Hong Kong operation, I always remind myself to make cautious decisions because they could affect more than four thousand colleagues and their families.

If not this path, what would have been your career plan B?

If I did not return to Hong Kong after my graduation from Leeds University in the United Kingdom, I may have gotten my PhD in UK and taught in universities or worked in the research and development department of construction companies. Or, I may have become a musician or singer/songwriter; I serve as a vocalist, guitarist, and drummer in my church worship team.