White hats for the good guys

...or at least I assume that must have been the thinking behind Hong Kong Trade Development Council's choice of colour for the safety helmets offered to the great and good of the exhibition and construction industries today. The 'inauguration' of Phase 2.5 of the Convention & Exhibition Centre attracted a good crowd and blazing, midday sun.

As you can see, Global Source's Sarah Benecke pulled off the construction helmet with somewhat more panache than the remainder of this motley crew. Andrew Kay of CP Exhibitions, next to Sarah, is the only person I know with a PhD in the exhibition industry. Then there's CMP's Michael Duck, Munich's Ronald Unterburger and Arthur Spurdle, long-associated with Messe Frankfurt.

The Phase 2.5 project is certainly a dramatic engineering exercise, spanning 100 metres of the harbour and turning what was previously a narrow bridge, linking the first two phases into 20,000 sq. metres of additional space. Oh, and I should add that 'inauguration' in this case meant the ceremonial tightening of a nut on one of the steel girders which will in due course support the new halls.

HKTDC chairman Peter Woo was talking in square feet today (the numbers sound bigger) and told the audience that the HKCEC would only be taken seriously if it joined the "million square feet club". It was Woo's last public function for HKTDC before handing the baton across to Jack So. The speech was clearly setting his successor up for continued lobbying on the Phase 3 development of the venue.