February_1967 — Page 3

BUILDING INDUSTRY EXHIBITION IN SYDNEY

AUSTRALIA'S huge, rapidly-expanding building industry will hold an exhibition of its products and services in Sydney next July. To be known as the International Building Industries Exhibition, it will be the first of the kind ever staged in Sydney and is already attracting wide interest from Australian manufacturers and from sup- pliers in many other parts of the world. The exhibition will cover every aspect of the industry from domestic to the largest commercial and industrial projects. It will be held in pavilions at the Sydney Showgrounds from July 24 to July 29.

The idea of the exhibition is to provide manufacturers and suppliers of materials and fittings of every kind with the opportunity of meeting major buyers from all over Australia and the countries of the Pacific.

The exhibition will be designed to interest contractors, home builders, architects, engineers, surveyors. quantity surveyors, designers, painting and spraying contractors. steel fabricators and all others connected in any way with the building and construction industry. On display will be a host of new products and services that have not pre- viously been shown in Australia. together with a large number of improved products with applications in many fields.

SITE FORMATION FOR NEW TANG SHIU KIN HOSPITAL

SITE formation work for the new Tang Shiu Kin Hos- pital at Morrison Hill is expected to start soon.

The new hospital, named after Sir Shiu-kin Tang who donated $1.3 million towards the total building cost of $3.2 million, is to be built on the site of the former Roads and Drainage Office depot in Queen's Road East. The remaining cost is to be met by Government which is also responsible for the recurrent expenses.

Artist's impression of the Tang Shui Kin Hospital.

Mr. G. D. Su, the well known architect, has offered his services which include planning, drawing and super- vision of the project without any fee.

The five-storey hospital, when completed, will pro- vide an additional centre for dealing with casualties and emergency cases on Hong Kong Island. There will be maternity and casualty wards, an out-patients department, a maternity and child health clinic and a home nursing training school.

NEW BUDDHIST HOSPITAL

CONSTRUCTION of the Hongkong Buddhist Hospital will start soon following a ground-breaking ceremony perform- ed recently by the Hon. Fung Ping-fan, an Unofficial Member of the Executive Council.

The hospital, with 350 beds and a large out-patients unit, will occupy 206.000 square feet in Heng Lam Street, Dofungan.

Mr. Wong Wan-tin, Chairman of the hospital's Pre- paration Standing Committee. said that construction would be divided into two phases. The estimated cost for the first phase is about $7,500,000 and $2,500,000 for the second phase.

Far East Architect & Builder February, 1967

The central-span beams of the Kapok Drive Flyover were placed in position over Queen's Road East on January 24.

INCENTIVES FOR ROAD-WORKS CONTRACTS?

"I SHOULD like to see the wider use of incentives to speed up contracts, which would mean mechanisation as far as possible. Better construction planning, coupled with stricter supervision, should result in less time and working space, both contributing to reduced obstruction."

This was one of the interesting points made by the Hon. Mr. Szeto Wai when he spoke on the subject of obstruction caused by road works on the motion for the adjournment of the Legislative Council on January 18th.

The question of obstruction to traffic by road works was a thorny one; repairs to existing roads, road widening schemes, and the replacement of old buildings by new and larger ones, all required work on services and utilities, and thus involved road works. Official comment had always been that machinery existed for co-ordinating the activities of the utilities affected, and that efforts were made to keep obstruction to the minimum. Nevertheless, Hong Kong continued to be plagued with road-up signs and many road works appeared to take much too long, either due to the had performance of the contractors or perhaps the lack of liaison between Public Works Department and the utilities.

Nathan Road had been a classic example but its place had now been usurped by Waterloo Road. Soon after the flyover was completed, after 18 months of traffic disorder. the junctions with Boundary Street and Prince Edward Road were thrown into chaos: for almost nine months work on the stretch of this road between Boundary Street and Prince Edward Road, a mere 400 feet. long, had been causing considerable inconvenience to road users, especial- ly the large number of school children in this area.

While appreciating that this roadwork involved a large number of utilities and services including a big water main, Mr. Szeto felt that it should have been possible to reduce the time with greater efficiency and better co- ordination.

There had been many complaints from the public that often only a handful of workers were to be seen on the job and that advantage was not taken of the light Summer evenings; it was to be hoped that the Contractor had not been experiencing financial difficulties and still been al- lowed to drag on with his contract. This chaos would soon end as completion was expected in February: order would be restored again but unfortunately this would not last long, because Prince Edward Road an all important East-West artery was due to be widened and improved and this would mean road barriers and digging-up for another nine to twelve months.

While it was unavoidable that the public must suffer if roads were to be improved (and most of them were not designed to take the heavy traffic of today and many had not been re-surfaced since their inception) the public need- ed greater efficiency and speed of execution, calling for careful programming of construction, closer supervision, and above all, planned co-ordination of all elements. This latter question could be made easier by adopting a com- mon concrete conduit underground to house the various utilities, especially for new road works.

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