Another Way At The Office

The Gig Economy is flourishing in a post covid-19 world, a situation that’s shone a spotlight on contractors. In Hong Kong, James Rice contracting co-founder and director James Tsang believes local contractors deserve better, and is doing his best to flip the script.

- Michael Wayne

Asia’s contractors have found a champion in James Tsang. The Co-Founder and Director of James Rice Contracting is a passionate defender of the profession, which he strongly believes does not get the respect it deserves. “How many contractors do you know? How many people describe themselves as contractors? It’s not saying you’re an architect, which has a sense of prestige around it. Even in the movies, you don’t see a lot of contractors as characters,” he points out. “Before I die, I’ll do as much as I can to tell the world how important contractors are and how crucial their work is. A contractor manages so many different trades – joinery, painting, ceilings, electrical and more – to complete a great project. It’s like the way a conductor guides all those instruments to produce an amazing performance.”

In fact, James Rice was founded as a direct result of James’s perception of how contractors are regarded. After years in Hong Kong hedge funds and financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays and ANZ, he ended up in project management, a field he says was combative and counterproductive. “Early on, there were problems. I’d argue with my project directors. They’d focus only on the money and didn’t care about the people working beneath us,” he says of his struggles. After one particularly vitriolic disagreement about schedules, James quit. “I was wasting my time. Largely, management in Hong Kong see contractors as merely the workers. They don’t care. I felt I had to do something about it, and the only thing I thought was worth doing was starting my own company and showing how it could – should – be done.”