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CHAPTER 13
Land, Public Works and Utilities
To meet the needs of the community and sustain Hong Kong's position as a world city in Asia, the Government is committed to maintaining a robust investment in building new infrastructures and improving existing ones, and will spend about $25 billion on capital works in 2001-02. In the next few years, the Government will maintain a steady growth in capital works expenditure.
The Works Bureau is mindful of the need to implement the large Public Works Programme (PWP) in the most cost effective and efficient manner. During the project planning stage, the construction costs, social costs and other intangible costs as well as possible revenues to be generated are taken into account in deciding the best option for implementation. During the construction stage, the progress and expenditure level of projects are monitored closely through regular review reports and meetings to ensure that the projects are delivered on schedule, within budget and in a cost-effective manner.
In order to help boost the economy through creating more job opportunities, implementation of projects under the PWP has been fast-tracked. Following a review of the procedures, measures have been introduced to shorten the lead time from inception to commencement of construction of a capital works project. The measures include simplifying the administrative requirements, compressing the duration of stages and procedures and taking parallel actions between critical activities as far as possible. As a result, the overall pre-construction period of a typical engineering project can be reduced from six years to less than four years.
Concerted efforts have been made to further improve health and safety on construction sites. Through the implementation of the Pay for Safety Scheme and the Independent Safety Audit Scheme, public works contractors have been encouraged to establish more efficient safety management systems for maintaining a safe and healthy working environment on construction sites. In 2001, the Considerate Contractors Site Award Scheme attracted 100 nominations from public and private sector sites, providing another incentive for participating contractors to be more considerate towards the public and the neighbourhood during construction. Contractors have also been encouraged to implement a Site Safety Cycle to increase the safety awareness of workers and to maintain good housekeeping and tidiness on construction sites. Regulating actions are taken against contractors with poor site safety records. As a result, the overall accident rate for public works contracts has continued to decline, and in 2001 it was about 40 accidents per 1 000 workers per year, which was about one-third of the construction industry average.