Justin Chin

• Managing Director
• Gamuda Engineering
• Malaysia

Tell me about yourself and what you specialize in. I am a full-time father and husband. In my free time, I enjoy building critical infrastructure across the region from metro systems to highways, water treatment plants and even data centers. I am particularly passionate about tunneling and have spent many years of my career underground!

Why do you love working in the construction industry? It is such a dynamic industry that is ripe for disruption given its reputation for being a laggard in all things digital. There has been a paradigm shift in this space in recent years which has been really exciting. Take the digital innovation team in my organisation for example; today it is over a 100-strong comprising digital engineers, cloud architects, programmers, BIM specialists, etc. This would have been completely unimaginable just a decade ago.

What topics and trends are you most passionate about in the industry? The disruptive potential of AI, digitalisation of processes and innovations in delivery. On this front, we’ve been really pushing the boundaries of end-to-end digitally integrated precast technologies at our automated robotic Industralised Building System facility in Malaysia.

What advice would you give to the next generation preparing for the future of the industry? Harness the power of data. Construction should be much more data driven as an industry, but it is not. For a start, there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit around and organisations with a concerted focus on extracting actionable insights from their data will certainly have a differentiating edge.