Since her establishment, Asian Institute of Built Environment (AIBE) has been in operation for over ten years. We started as a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) provider at Kowloon Bay and today, we are headquartered at Yau Ma Tei with branch campuses at Jordan and Fortress Hill. Throughout this decade, besides conducting CPD events, we have been focusing on running courses from the undergraduate to the doctorate levels, in different areas of building and construction, mainly building services engineering and housing management. I would like to draw your attention to four distinctive features of our institute.
First, quality of teaching and learning is always our priority though we are still a relatively small private organization. All our teaching faculties are possessing high academic and professional qualifications. Our provision of tertiary education has been consistently rated by our external examiners in the United Kingdom as equivalent to the home university there, and the report of a recent visit to our campus by Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education of the U.K. offered us an extremely high appraisal on our academic and administrative standards. Second, we have been encouraging faculties by incentives to conduct research works, publish them on academic journals, and deliver findings in daily lectures and tutorials. We publish a list of academic and professional publications of faculties on an annual basis. Third, our campus is a place where our students can feel warmth and care. Our administrative staff has built up a friendly relationship with both alumni and current students who definitely know we are always trying to help them to solve problems whenever we are able to do so.
A fourth feature is crucial to our students who are all working adults taking further study after leaving their workplace on a daily basis, which is commuting convenience. A two minute walk from the exit of the MTR station to our campus is not an easy job to accomplish in Hong Kong. With a view to all these, I am looking forward to welcoming you who are keen on improving your knowledge and academic qualifications, and subsequently professional qualifications, by taking courses of a British university jointly operated by us.