Faces of WP3 – Jiawei Chen

In our new ‘Faces of WP3’ series, we’ll be sitting down with members of the WP3 team to discover what drives them, their thoughts on the industry, and get a glimpse behind the scenes.

Next up, we’re delighted to introduce our Digital Infrastructure Lead, Jiawei Chen.

Tell us a bit about your career path. What led you to this role?

After university, I joined an engineering consultancy in New Zealand as part of the building services team, initially as an electrical engineer. When the business created a dedicated ICT, security and AV design team, I was drafted in thanks to my electronics background. That experience taught me everything from consulting skills to building the engineering processes behind design delivery.

In 2016, I moved to the UK and continued working across ICT, security and AV on commercial buildings and data centres across the UK and Europe. Then in 2021, I made a career shift into ICT Infrastructure for master planning projects, huge in scale and mainly based in the Middle East. Now at WP3, I’m excited to help grow the Digital team and bring these disciplines into our wider offering.

Can you tell us more about your role as Digital Infrastructure Lead?

I oversee several connected disciplines including ICT, electronic security, AV and smart buildings. Our team delivers engineering services from early advice through to design and commissioning. My focus is on growing the team at WP3 while working on some truly exciting projects along the way.

What are some of the biggest challenges the industry is facing right now?

AI is a big one. As an industry, we’re still figuring out how to use these tools safely, especially when they’re evolving faster than companies can properly evaluate them. We also need to think long term. If entry level roles reduce, could we face a shortage of senior engineers in five years’ time?

What do you do to relax outside of work?

I’m a big foodie and love to travel. That was one of the main reasons I moved to the UK. Being more than ten hours away from everywhere I wanted to go just wasn’t ideal.