Ching Cheung Road flyover
difficult hilly ground and crosses several large water- courses. It involved the excavation of more than 600,000 cu. yd. of earth and rock.
Speaking at the opening of the road. The Hon. A. M. J. Wright, Director of Public Works, said that the junction with Tai Po Road had been planned so that an underpass could be built at a later stage to separate the east/west Tsuen Wan traffic from the north south Shatin and Tai Po traffic. An underpass some 130 ft. long had also been built to maintain access to the Roman Catholic cemetery,
The project was designed by the Kowloon Roads and Drainage Division of the Civil Engineering Office. Win- some Co. were the general contractors and Paul Lee En- gineering Co. constructed the flyover.
FURTHER STAGE AT SHEK LEI
ANOTHER multi-storey domestic block and a school build- ing will be built at the Shek Lei resettlement estate, Kwai Chung, near the Tsuen Wan district in the New Territories of Hong Kong.
The block will be of the 16-storey Mark V type de- signed to provide four different domestic room sizes to suit allocation for families of four, five, seven and nine people, while the school building will be six storeys high and will contain a total of 24 classrooms.
When completed the 16-storey block will provide ac- commodation for some 4.500 people and the new school will have 2.160 primary places in two sessions for children of the estate. The domestic block will be the tenth for which tenders have been called.
Of the 15 domestic blocks planned for this estate, two have been completed and occupied while work has either started or is about to start on seven others. Work on this latest block and school is expected to start in January and will take about 18 months to finish.
The Shek Lei resettlement estate, located immediately east of Castle Peak Road, forms part of Government's ambitious plan to develop the whole of Kwai Chung area a scheme which involves the reclamation of Gin Drinker's Bay into a
new industrial and residential area. The Kwai Chung area when fully developed is expected to accommodate a population of about 1.000,000 people.
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HOMES FOR MUNICIPAL STAFF
THE Federal Capital Commission, Kuala Lumpur, is to build 419 houses at the 5th mile Jalan Gombak and sell them to its staff to encourage home-ownership. The pro- ject will be carried out in two stages, Phase I of which will be 205 units and phase II 214 units. Payments will be spread over a period of 15 years and there will be no down payments.
Site work is nearing completion. Construction work under phase I will begin shortly. There will be 84 units of two-storey semi-detached houses, 120 single-storey ter- race houses and one two-storey bungalow. Phase I will
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cost M$1.751,814. It will take about a year to complete. The houses will be sold at price ranging from M$8,500 to M$18,500.
Tenders for phase II of the project will be called for next month. It will comprise 80 units of two-storey de- tached bungalows, 26 two-storey semi-detached houses and 108 single-storey terrace houses.
This is the commission's first big housing project for its staff. With two minor schemes already carried out, it will accommodate nearly 50 per cent of the commission's staff.
GIANT GIRDERS IN HK BLOCK
Two steel girders, believed to be the biggest of their type in the Far East, are being used to create a column-free hall in the new Bank of Canton Building in Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong.
Each girder weighs 37 tons and spans 47 ft. 9 in. Together they support the columns of an 18-storey office block with a total load of about 1,200 tons per girder. The HK$22 million building, has a two-storey basement, a bank podium of four storeys and the 18-storey office
tower.
The 13 ft. deep girders are made up of top and bot- tom flanges, two webs, in four pieces, and horizontal and
Left: A steel member being positioned on the Queen's Road site. Right: Recent view of framework progress
vertical diaphragms all shipped from the UK by Dor- man Long (B & E) Ltd. in separate pieces for site assem- bly. Each piece was lifted and placed in position on the site by derrick and assembled by high-strength friction grip bolts. The whole operation took 17 days.
W. Szeto are the architects and engineers for the block, and J. Roger Preston and Partners are the consult- ing mechanical and electrical engineers. The main con- tractor is Paul Y. Construction Co., Ltd. and the sub- structure and steel erection is by Gammon (HK) Ltd.
CONTRACT FOR SENTAB
SENTAB, Stockholm contractors, have obtained a US$13 million contract from the Malaysian Ministry of Agricul- ture for an irrigation canal project in the Muda river basin in northwestern Malaysia. The canals will have a total length of 42 miles.
The project will include a number of dams, 14 major road and railway bridges and some 40 minor bridges.
The contract forms part of a large project which aims at making Malaysia self-supporting in rice. The cost of the entire scheme is about US$80 million, largely to be financed through World Bank loans.
Consulting engineers are Sir William Halcrow and Partners, London,
Far East Architect & Builder December, 1966