Construction site safety in Hong Kong

The structural characteristics of the Hong Kong construction industry, most notably its elaborate system of subcontracting and the casual basis on which labour is employed, pose serious problems for safety managers. By international standards, Hong Kong's construction industry performs very badly in the area of safety. Recent work in the UK and Finland highlights the effectiveness of behavioural techniques to improve safety performance on construction sites. Work is currently under way to test these techniques in the Hong Kong construction setting. The structural properties of the Hong Kong construction industry have been taken into consideration and labour commitments to the group and to the organization have been identified for additional consideration in research. It is expected that these variables will intervene in the application of behavioural techniques to determine their effectiveness. This paper investigates the theoretical background to commitment at the group and organizational level and presents a site level research model which is illustrative of the possible effects that group and organization level commitment may be found to have on the use of behavioural techniques.     

Study of attitude changes in people after the implementation of a new safety management system: the supervision plan

The construction industry of Hong Kong has a very poor site safety record. The overall accident rate has gone down a little during the last few years, but the number of fatalities has risen dramatically. In the past, the Hong Kong Government adopted a laissez-faire approach in managing construction safety, hoping that market forces would regulate the safety performance. However, the approach has proved to be ineffective. Since 1986, the Government has taken a proactive approach in combating construction site safety, and has introduced a series of safety programmes, which consist of encouraged and mandatory schemes aiming at nourishing a proper safety culture in the construction industry. Recently, the Government decided to criminalize site accident cases by introducing a so-called ‘Supervision Plan’, aiming at changing the safety attitude and culture of construction practitioners. This paper applies an attitude-changing model, ‘reinforcement theory’, to predict the changing attitude of people in the construction industry. The results show that the attitude of construction practitioners in Hong Kong will change to be more positive when they receive more messages to confirm that people really are put into jail for negligence under the Supervision Plan.     

Quest for continuous quality improvement for public housing construction in Hong Kong

With mandatory implementation of the ISO 9000 quality system by the Housing Authority in Hong Kong, most construction firms there now claim to have initiated quality systems in their processes as defined in their quality manuals. In addition, an objective quality measuring yardstick, the Performance Assessment Scoring Scheme (PASS), has been administered by the Housing Authority of Hong Kong to monitor the performance quality of contractors. These two measures, coupled with the two other contractual requirements stipulating the use of mechanized formwork and precast facade units, are directed towards achievement of a desired quality standard. However, the PASS analysis has revealed that the general level of quality has not improved significantly and the expected continuous improvement in construction quality has not been realized over a specific time period. Quality appears far better on paper than does the actual work on site. This suggests that quality management in the construction setting is far more difficult to achieve than it is in other industries. This paper explores possible reasons for failure in the quest for quality in public housing construction, and proposes changes needed before the vision of continuous quality improvement can be realized.     

香港地区的工程项目安全管理

国内外有关安全管理的法律法规很多,但工程建设中安全事故仍时有发生。从安全管理实务出发,以香港地区为背景,对安全管理的风险识别、规划、处理以及现场干预等进行了论述。     

Measurement of the performance of ready mixed concreting resources as data for system simulation

Concrete is a very important construction industry material, and this is especially true in Hong Kong. The efficient organization of the supply of concrete from ready mixed concrete plants is beneficial to both concrete companies and contractors. It is also essential for an efficient construction industry, since a very high propor1 tion of the in situ concrete in Hong Kong is supplied ready mixed from an off-site plant. Whether concrete companies in Hong Kong are using their resources well and are able to satisfactorily match the timing of their deliveries to construction site needs are questions discussed in this paper, based on data collected by the authors. The data are planned for use in validating a simulation model of ready mixed concrete plant operations in Hong Kong. The third author spent 20 weeks in 1999–2000 at concrete batching plants in Hong Kong, studying their operations. Data on a sample of 15 typical operational days at four plants, which included 295 pours on sites and 1677 truckmixer trips, are presented. Truckmixer journey times for delivering concrete and journey times for returning to plants and their distributions have been found. Queuing statistics for truckmixers on site waiting to be unloaded, placing times when unloading concrete, washing out and waiting times on sites after unloading, and delays in the continuous delivery of concrete are also described. Service has been studied in terms of the matching achieved between site delivery timing require1 ments and the need to use truckmixers efficiently. For the 295 pours, the relationship is shown between gaps in the supply of concrete to site and the extent to which truckmixers are bunched in a queue on site. Matching was found to be good for only 17% of the 295 pours, the variability in service received by different sites is considerable, and the importance of studying the truckmixer scheduling problem is highlighted, so that this variability might be reduced and extreme cases eliminated.     

Comparison of the concreting productivities in Hong Kong and Beijing and a proposed comparison methodology

The ready mixed concrete (RMC) industry is an important sector of the construction industry in many places. Its level of development in terms of size and performance may be taken as an index representative of the development level of a particular construction industry taken as a whole. Therefore comparisons between different places are of interest, and of potential economic benefit. As part of a larger research study in Hong Kong on the productivity of concreting, data have been obtained on the RMC industries in Hong Kong (HK) and Beijing (BJ). Both are large cities at different stages of economic development. The study involved close observation in the early 1990s of 154 pours on building construction sites in HK and 38 days spent at 38 RMC plants, one day at each, together with 34 site pours and 20 days at RMC plants in BJ. Much detailed performance information has been derived, and a comparison methodology is proposed which could have general application in this industry. It is demonstrated that the RMC industry in HK is more productive than the industry in BJ.     

Relationship between construction safety signs and symbols recognition and characteristics of construction personnel

This study investigates the relationship between the characteristics of construction personnel and their degree of recognition of safety signs and symbols. The safety signs and symbols are split into categories of mandatory action signs, prohibition signs and warning symbols. Thirty safety signs and symbols printed in colour and in Chinese were distributed to 560 construction personnel working in eight different construction sites in Hong Kong. The results drawn from 388 respondents indicate that substantial problems exist in comprehending the signs and symbols that are posted in construction sites.

The percentages of construction personnel who correctly identified mandatory action signs, prohibition signs and warning symbols are 90%, 61% and 55% respectively. Drinking habits, involvement in on‐site safety promotion activities and their job positions play a determinant role in their ability of comprehending these construction safety symbols. These findings provide meaningful implications to the industry in the design, selection and positioning of safety symbols on site.     

香港特区塔机市场及安全管理

自2008年金融海啸后,香港十大基建工程陆续上马,包括数个铁路项目、跨境基建、西九文化区和新发展区建设,以改善香港市民的居住环境和发展的持续性,特区政府逐年加大建筑工程投资额度,在抓紧落实十大基建工程项目的同时,积极推进中小基建项目。另外私人发展商推出的商品住宅和商用写字楼落成量也大幅度回升,香港的建筑业自2011年已进入了一个比较繁荣的高峰期。     

Development of a partnering performance index (PPI) for construction projects in Hong Kong: a Delphi study

Over the past decade, research studies on benefits, critical success factors, difficulties, process, conceptual and theoretical models of construction partnering have been ubiquitous in the construction management discipline. In fact, there is adequate evidence that an increasing number of client organizations are adopting a partnering approach to undertake their building and construction projects both locally and worldwide during the last decade. With the perceived benefits that partnering brings about, research into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the success of partnering projects in construction becomes vital as it can help set a benchmark for measuring the performance level of partnering projects. However, although there are some related studies and papers on this research area, few, if any, comprehensive and systematic studies focus on developing a comprehensive, objective, reliable and practical performance evaluation model for partnering projects. A model has been developed using the Delphi survey technique to objectively measure the performance of partnering projects in Hong Kong based on a consolidated KPIs' conceptual framework previously developed for partnering projects. Four rounds of Delphi questionnaire survey were conducted with 31 construction experts in Hong Kong. The results reveal that the top seven weighted KPIs to evaluate the success of partnering projects in Hong Kong were: (1) time performance; (2) cost performance; (3) top management commitment; (4) trust and respect; (5) quality performance; (6) effective communications; and (7) innovation and improvement. A statistically significant consensus on the top seven weighted KPIs was also obtained. Finally, a composite Partnering Performance Index (PPI) for partnering projects in Hong Kong was derived to provide an all‐round assessment of partnering performance. Different partnering projects can now be assessed on the same basis for benchmarking purposes. Construction senior executives and project managers can thus use the Index to measure, evaluate and improve the performance of their partnering projects to strive for construction excellence. Although the PPI was developed locally in Hong Kong, the research method could be replicated in other parts of the world to produce similar indices for international comparison. Such an extension would aid the understanding of managing partnering projects across different geographic locations.     

Assessing the levels of material wastage affected by sub-contracting relationships and projects types with their correlations

A significant amount of solid wastes are produced every year from construction and demolition activities, and construction wastes have become the major sources among them; the increasing generation of construction wastes has caused significant pollution to the environment and risen public concern. Therefore, the minimization of construction wastes has become a pressing issue in the Hong Kong construction industry. This paper investigates the generation of construction waste on site and their relations with prevailing sub-contracting arrangements and projects types in Hong Kong. This investigation will lead to the identification of the major waste generation areas on construction sites. Nineteen construction projects are under in-depth interviews for collecting the relevant data and information for the analysis to the local construction industry. By using the findings of this research, four methods are proposed to mitigate the generation of wastes by reshaping the current practices of construction projects. These methods are: (i) development of cost-effective approach, (ii) integrated waste minimization at the tender stage, (iii) provision and motivation of waste reduction training, and (iv) a waste control system as a part of site management functions.     

浅议建筑工程施工阶段安全控制对策——兼谈香港建造工程建筑地盘的安全管理

建筑工程在施工阶段,安全隐患和安全生产事故时有发生。本文通过介绍香港建造业建筑地盘安全管理的有关内容,对建筑工程施工阶段的安全控制问题阐述了若干对策及意见。     

新加坡、英国及香港地区的建筑质量与安全分析

质量与安全是影响建筑业的两个重要因素。近年来,我国建设工程质量与安全事故频频发生,给公众的生命财产安全造成了严重的损失,为此,本文系统地研究并分析了新加坡、英国及香港地区建筑质量与安全的现状、行业规章及政府相关法规,总结归纳了各建设阶段影响建筑质量和安全的因素及相应制定的有关对策与措施,从中发现质量和安全不是相互独立的,而是有许多共同的影响因素,针对这一点建立了一个简单的模型,以量化的方式对新加坡、英国及香港地区为提高建筑质量和安全所提出的措施进行了比较和分析,希望以此给境内的建筑企业和有关主管部门提供一些参考与借鉴,以提高整个建筑行业的质量与安全水平。     

Critical factors for environmental performance assessment (EPA) in the Hong Kong construction industry

With the rise in the public concern on environmental protection, more construction firms start to apply environmental management for their construction activities. As a result, environmental management systems (EMS) have been implemented in construction. However, to improve the construction environment in Hong Kong, environmental performance assessment (EPA) has been designed for reviewing, monitoring, checking and evaluating environmental performance. A list of evaluation factors for EPA are identified and grouped into seven major factors: management and training; air and noise; auditing; waste and water; cost saving on resources; energy; and regulation. The results from a survey highlight that the most important evaluation factor is management and training and the least significant result is regulation. A voluntary approach has been promoted instead of the traditional mandatory system. Furthermore, three case studies are used to test the reliability with seven groups of evaluation factors in measuring the environmental performance for construction. The results from the case study analysis proved the effectiveness of the developed environmental performance assessment. Therefore, the developed environmental performance assessment can benefit the construction industry and help to achieve continuous improvement on environmental performance.     

Forecasting construction durations for public housing projects: a Hong Kong perspective

The past thirty years have seen a great surge of international attention and discussion in the domain of construction time performance of building projects. Demand for residential construction has been continually increasing in Hong Kong since the 1950s, while an accelerated demand has been envisaged in the next few years up to 2001. This paper is based on the findings of the third survey in an investigation which aimed at determining a group of critical factors that affect construction durations of building projects in Hong Kong. This stage of the study attempted to generate standards (norms) for overall completion periods of public housing blocks, by modelling the durations of the primary work packages in the building construction process, i.e. piling, pile caps/raft, superstructure, EandM services, finishes and their respective sequential start-start lag times, in terms of the identified sets of critical factors (significant variables). Data from 15 case studies of standard New Cruciform type housing blocks was collected from the client and contractors. Multiple Linear Regression was applied in analyzing the project data and formulating a construction duration model. The forecasting performance of the model was next evaluated using an independent (new) set of project information from the client, in terms of a relative measure known as the Percentage Error. Both the general applications and drawbacks of the model are briefly presented and examined herein. The low values of percentage error (less than about ±10%) for overall construction durations confirmed that the model can be a reliable tool for predicting the construction durations of public housing projects in Hong Kong; and the research methodology used could well be extended to similar studies and duration forecasts in other sub-sectors in Hong Kong, as well as in other countries.     

Rough set theory for distilling construction safety measures

There are numerous construction safety measures adopted by the local construction industry in Hong Kong. The purpose of this study is to distil the more significant measures from all these practices. To achieve this, the rough set theory, a data mining technique by applying the rule induction method, is proposed to distil the rules that determine the safety performance of construction firms. Rough sets represent a different mathematical approach to vagueness and uncertainty. It is based on the assumption that lowering the degree of precision in the data makes the data pattern more visible. Under such an assumption, the rough set theory can provide the ability of classifying vague and uncertain data. A practical example is used to illustrate its application to distil these safety measures and highlight those which are most effective and important in combating site accidents. There are three decision rules identified; the best one is companies with a comprehensive safety orientation programme and good safety award campaigns for senior management staff which give the lowest accident rate and the best safety performance. Safety management rules can be successfully reduced, facilitating contractors to direct their limited recourses effectively.     

A risk-based approach for the design of rock slopes subject to multiple failure modes—illustrated by a case study in Hong Kong

The widening of the Tuen Mun Road highway in Hong Kong involved construction and subsequent operation in an area of steep rock slopes above a heavily trafficked six lane highway. A risk-based approach to slope design was required by the authorities. The approach that was developed is described in detail and includes consideration of risk acceptance criteria, consequence analysis, effects of traffic characteristics, likelihood of slope failure and overall risk and risk allocation. Based on statistical data for slope failures in Hong Kong, world-wide data on dam failures and some engineering judgement, a relation was estimated between annual probability of slope failure and design factor of safety.The implementation of the design involved allocation of acceptable levels of risk to different sections of slope and different modes of slope failure such that the summation of all risk was less than an expected fatality rate of 0.01 deaths per year per 500 m section of slope. This level of risk was determined in relation to objective standards for industrial facilities generally as defined by Hong Kong Planning Guidance criteria (Hong Kong Planning Standards and Guidelines, Hong Kong Planning Department, 1996 (Chapter 11)).These risks were converted into design factors of safety using the likely numbers of failures per mode and per section (more possible failures means that each possible failure location requires a higher factor of safety to achieve the overall risk objectives). Required design factors of safety from this approach were typically in the range 1.2–1.8 compared with a normal requirement in Hong Kong of 1.4.     

Impact of social safety investments on social costs of construction accidents

Most contractors' financial losses associated with accidents, but not all, are also social costs. Some social costs are not incurred by contractors, but by society. Social costs of construction accidents have been gathered for years 1999–2001. The safety investments made by both contractors and society are also identified based on data assembled for these three years. These social costs and safety investments were identified from 119 construction projects involving 1414 accidents and from 18 government departments in Hong Kong. The data shows that there was an increasing trend in social safety investments and a decreasing trend in social costs of construction accidents from 1999 to 2001. During this period, for every extra $1 of social safety investments made, a reduction of $2.27 of social costs on construction accidents was achieved in Hong Kong.     

Barcode Technology for an Incentive Reward Program to Reduce Construction Wastes

Abstract: A group-based incentive reward program (IRP) has been implemented in this study to minimize avoidable wastes of construction materials by rewarding workers according to the amounts and values of materials they saved. The barcode technique is used to facilitate the effective management program of construction materials on site. Experiments are conducted on two residential projects in Hong Kong and results demonstrate the effectiveness of the IRP in motivating workers to reduce construction waste. Beyond this application research, the relationship between construction waste reduction and quality-time-cost performances of the project are discussed, whereas difficulties and challenges of applying the IRP and barcode technology are mentioned.     

城市跨界发展与融合——港深案例研究

探讨港深两地跨界城市发展与城市融合的进程。香港和深圳已建立了紧密的经济融合,制度层面上的融合也有一定的进展,但社会层面上的融合显著滞后。香港和深圳居民对边界另一边的对方缺乏充分认识。超过57%的香港和深圳居民不太熟悉或非常不熟悉另一个城市。超过四成的香港和深圳受访者认为价值观的差异是构建港深大都会的最主要的障碍。港深大都会的跨界社区尚未融合。香港和深圳在许多方面存在差异,造成两地之间难以实现完全的融合。港深两地有必要在"一国两制"的原则下,以提升两地城市竞争力与方便居民跨界居住与工作为出发点,推动城市跨界发展与融合。     

Evaluations of existing waste recycling methods: A Hong Kong study

Environmental problems have been considered as a serious situation in Hong Kong construction. Waste management is pressing harder with the alarming signal warning the industry. Reuse, recycling and reducing the wastes are considered as the only methods to recover the wastes generated; however, the implementations still have much room for improvement. In order to ameliorate the existing situations, evaluations of the existing waste recycling methods are studied in this research. A telephone interviewing to the recyclers, site visits to the construction and demolition sites (including the Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate Phase 1) and the centralized recycling plant in Tuen Mun Area 38 are under investigation. Difficulties encountered for various recycling parties are investigated. Rather than the poor quality found from the recyclable materials, they found the high investment cost, lengthy demolition period and limited space caused the major barriers for them. Therefore, some recommendations are suggested: (i) proposing a higher landfill charging scheme; (ii) setting up a centralized centre for recycling the materials; (iii) examining the Hong Kong government should be supported in the provision of land for recycling plants; (iv) implementing innovative demolition methods; (v) allowing some locations in town for residents’ easy access to drop-off recyclable materials; (vi) allowing flexible demolition periods; (vii) setting up recycling plant in town or in the form of mobile installations; (viii) reusing the reusable components as donations to the charity organization; (ix) providing higher flexibility in receiving concrete waste in Tuen Mun Area 38 recycling plant; and (x) balancing the supply and demand of recycled materials through legislations or incentive schemes.