Digital cities in action: Meet Joy Hong
Our Digital cities in action series gives you an inside look at our technical experts in the digital sector around Asia. This week, we feature Joy Hong, who leads our digital initiatives in the Chinese Mainland.
Based in Shanghai, Joy wears many hats to drive digital adaptation. She believes meaningful change comes from hands-on involvement in real projects. Alongside leading digital initiatives, she takes on roles as a senior mechanical engineer and project manager — applying digital workflows in practice and refining them through real-world experience.
What do you do at AECOM?
I am a project manager, a BIM lead, and a senior mechanical engineer in the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) design team at the Shanghai office. I joined AECOM eight years ago in a BIM‑focused role, and over time my work has evolved to combine project delivery, engineering responsibility and digital integration.
I have always believed that traditional MEP design will eventually evolve through digital transformation. With this mindset, I continue to support our team in moving forward digitally. However, being a BIM lead alone is difficult to drive real changes fast. While the BIM lead role provides overall direction, driving meaningful change requires close involvement in real projects. That is why I also take on the role of mechanical engineer or project manager, so I can apply digital workflows directly and refine them through real project experience. I really enjoy being able to connect engineering expertise with digital tools to work more creatively and more efficiently.
What AECOM project is most memorable for you?
The most impressive project I’ve worked on is a research and development (R&D) building in Taipei for a well-known global tech company. Completed last year, this project was a defining experience that significantly shaped my career during the three years I worked on it.
I was the project manager leading the MEP, digital building and sustainability teams. One of the key challenges was that this facility needed to combine office space with more than 30 hardware laboratories. We provided MEP design to meet different requirements of these 30-plus lab teams.
We communicated extensively with the lab teams on a daily basis to understand their near-term and long-term needs, distinguish between must-haves and nice-to-haves, and strategically allocate the power and cooling loads to enable future expansion while keeping our sustainability goals.
BIM played a key role in this project. It gave clarity to all stakeholders. Using BIM models in meetings, lab owners, end users and lab equipment suppliers could immediately understand our design. This allowed us to discuss detailed topics such as fully coordinating MEP endpoints with lab furniture, equipment delivery routes, maintenance access, and how MEP control systems respond to different experiment scenarios. Overall, BIM kept everyone aligned and confident during the design decision-making process.
This project marked a turning point in my career, strengthening my project management skills in delivering complex, digitally driven projects.
How do you see the digital space evolving in MEP engineering?
MEP engineering is inherently part of the digital transformation. Today, most of our projects already utilize 3D design and simulation tools alongside our long-established design expertise.
With increasingly complex building geometries, more diverse environmental control requirements, rising power demand, and stricter energy‑efficiency targets, MEP design needs to be more flexible, cost-effective, energy efficient and adaptive to climate challenges.
MEP consultancy is still a knowledge‑intensive service, making it essential to continually enhance both design efficiency and design quality to meet the industry’s growing challenges. Looking ahead, I’m excited to join an advanced digital program, which will guide our exploration of how digital solutions can enhance MEP design. These capabilities can help our engineers focus on higher-value tasks so we can deliver better solutions for our clients.
Can you share a piece of advice to those who want to follow this career path?
Many people will talk about learning, and of course learning is important. But input alone is not enough. You need to internalize what you learn and turn it into your own understanding. One practical tip is to talk to people about your ideas as much as possible, face-to-face if you can. Even if the person sitting opposite you is just listening, you will still gain new insights. When you explain something out loud, you are actually testing whether you truly understand it. People may ask you questions, and that is often the moment you realize what you have missed or not fully thought through. This process helps validate and strengthen knowledge. Sometimes you may even discover a better way to explain or improve your idea.
In my experience, face-to-face communication is still the most effective way to exchange ideas. It cannot be fully replaced by messages on Teams or emails. Real conversation builds understanding, trust and better collaboration, which are essential in complex projects.