Asia organisational structure changes

Having considered all the great opportunities, and our immediate focus for 2021, we are delighted to communicate that we have initialised our NE/SE Asia business with the following organisational structure changes:

Leo Zuo

Effective from 1st April 2020, Leo Zuo will take up the role of Certification Support Manager. Based in HK, Leo has been working for Warringtonfire for 13 years as certification engineer covering the wider Asia (especially Greater China) area. Leo has primarily worked on factory audits for Certifire, CE and MED certification, but his support extends to authority listing maintenance (e.g. Warringtonfire recognition at Taiwan Housing Department, HK Building Department etc) and external sales support. 

In his new role as Certification Support Manager, Leo is responsible for a whole range of certification support activities in the region, including HK certification office daily management, factory auditor team management, compliance management, HK administration system upgrade, as well as external sales support (including technical support and working as partners to the BDMs when they are recruited). Leo reports to Jifeng directly.

Mahmoud Akl

With immediate effect, Mahmoud will take up the role of Acting Singapore Assessment Manager while he is working remotely in Melbourne with pending relocation to Singapore. Most recently Mahmoud had been working as a senior assessment engineer and team leader in our Australia assessment team since 2017. Prior to that Mahmoud had over 8 years’ experience in managing construction projects in the UAE. In his new role, Mahmoud has overall responsibilities of the Singapore assessment team’s management, including daily management, quality management, competence management, operations, budget delivery etc. Mahmoud reports directly to Jifeng.

Steve Kettle

Steve Kettle, our 'man in Singapore' for 28 years, will continue working on assessments as an integrated part of the new Singapore assessment team, under Mamoud's leadership. In preparation for his pending retirement, Steve will proactively work on knowledge transfer to the rest of the team, and work closely to support Mahmoud on the knowledge transfer needs and priorities for the assessment team. 

In addition, Steve will also assume a role of technical development manager (TDM) with his available time (reflecting the operations needs and business needs). Within the TDM capacity, Steve will utilise his local experience to proactively support technical business development and identify technical development initiatives particularly that can improve our local recognition and engagement. In some cases, the technical development initiatives will extend wider than just assessments. With his TDM part of the responsibilities, Steve reports to Jifeng directly.