HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
the inefficiency of the Council. In fact, delays started well before the commencement of work. As it is, the whole process of preliminary planning, feasibility study, scheduling of facilities, approval for the detailed layout plan, tendering up to the start of work takes over 20 months. This process is very slow indeed. As several government departments are involved, there are a lot of bureaucratic procedures.
On 'very expensive', we have criticized many times. The 10-odd minor maintenance projects at the Victoria Park costed $300 million and no itemized details of the works were provided. The cost of the Central Library shot up from $300 to $500 millions. I am sure when we make final calculations in 1999, that latter figure will grow even bigger.
In the past year, when we discussed this at different Select Committees, we seemed to be helpless because all of us felt we were bound by the Memorandum of Administrative Arrangement. Recently when I had another look at the Memorandum, I found it very flexible, only that the Urban Council never chose to take advantage of the flexibility. I found that it was not written in the Memorandum that we had to pay 16% on-cost to the Architectural Services Department. So, Mr. Chairman, in my motion and other suggestions for improvement I am submitting today, I hope to improve the efficiency of our construction projects within the framework of the Memorandum as well as to negotiate with the ASD for a more reasonable percentage of on-cost.
My first suggestion is to commission certain capital works projects directly to private architects. In fact, this concept was mentioned in the said Memorandum of Administrative Arrangement. In paragraph 4.10 of the Memorandum, it was anticipated that we would have a works division of our own. Let me read this out quickly for you.
4.10 It is anticipated that the Urban Council would ask the Urban Services Department to set up its own works division soon in order to oversee the work of private architects or to take up projects on its own. If and when this occurs, UC should apply to the Chief Secretary for considerations on not commissioning projects to the ASD.
So, I can see there is flexibility and a channel, only we have not given consideration to setting up a works division within the Department to be responsible for some projects. If we do have such a division, we will be able to have a say and commission some projects to private architects. I think it will be more efficient and we can have control in our hands. I hope we can realise this soon.
My second suggestion is for us to negotiate with the ASD for a new set of criteria governing on-cost. The existing percentage of on-cost at 16% is very unreasonable and by far higher than the market standard. On the average, architect firms nowadays charge 8% to 10% for co-ordinating and supervising
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