Kong's Construction Research Articles

Evaluating the embodied carbon of building materials imported to Hong Kong

The rapid growth of the construction industry prompts the interregional imports of building materials, leading to the embodied carbon (EC) transfers. Previous studies evaluated trade-driven EC through Input-Output analysis or focused on individual products, lacking the detailed analysis of EC of building material at the product level. This study examines the EC in the import of 52 building material commodities to Hong Kong in 2012–2021. The EC is calculated by multiplying the quantities of imported building materials by the emission factor for their production in the exporters. The import quantity data are obtained and validated by local and international trading statistics, while the emission factors are collected from the literature and relevant life cycle database (e.g. Ecoinvent). The results show that the EC was between 3.18 and 6.76 Mt/a over the ten years, equivalent to 7.5–17.7% of operational emissions in Hong Kong's construction sector. The EC transfer to Mainland China is found the most significant, accounting for 58.7–76.1% of the total, followed by that to Japan, Taiwan of China, and Vietnam. This uneven EC transfers mainly result from various quantities and types of imported materials from different exporters. The EC per import value is unevenly transferred, ranging from 4.05 to over 2000 g/HKD. The EC mitigation effects of the material efficiency measure were generally negative, ranging from −1.80 to 0.23 Mt. Meanwhile, the EC mitigation effects of the cleaner production measure of materials were continuously positive, from 0.03 to 0.33 Mt. This study proposes the methodology to quantify the trade-driven EC and support the classification of consumption-based responsibility of the construction sector in Hong Kong and beyond.

THE ASYMMETRY OF DISPUTANTS IN CONSTRUCTION MEDIATION

Mediation has been encouraged as a primary alternative dispute resolution mechanism to deal with construction disputes in Hong Kong. Considering its cost and time advantages, mediation is expected to be welcomed by the parties in dispute. However, in the past decade, the rate of mediation adoption has not been particularly outstanding. While it is believed that voluntary participation is pivotal to successful mediation, the unequal footing of the disputing parties may negate voluntary attempts. Past mediation research mostly studied the determinants of mediation, the choice of mediation tactics, outcomes of mediation which is quite descriptive than theoretical. This study examines the forms of asymmetry and their existence or otherwise in construction dispute mediation. Manifestations of asymmetries were operationalized from literature. Data for the study were collected from Hong Kong's construction experienced professionals. The majority of the one hundred ninety-three valid responses are from respondents having over 20 years of work experience in the industry. Three forms of asymmetry were suggested by processing the data through a principal component factor analysis (PCFA). The empirical findings affirm the proposed forms of asymmetry derived from theory. Mediators should assist the disputants to: i) prepare well for the mediation and not to use financial resources to protract the mediation process; ii) investigate the actual happenings leading to the dispute as detailed as possible; and iii) develop genuine attitude for achieving a quick settlement.

Patterns of Cancer-Related Risk Behaviors Among Construction Workers in Hong Kong: A Latent Class Analysis Approach.

BackgroundHong Kong's construction industry currently faces a manpower crisis. Blue-collar workers are a disadvantaged group and suffer higher levels of chronic diseases, for example, cancer, than the wider population. Cancer risk factors are likely to cluster together. We documented prevalence of cancer-associated lifestyle risk behaviors and their correlates among Hong Kong construction workers.MethodsData were collected from workers at 37 railway-related construction worksites throughout Hong Kong during May 2014. Tobacco use, alcohol consumption, unbalanced nutrition intake, and physical inactivity were included in the analysis. Latent class analysis and multivariable logistic regression were performed to identify the patterns of risk behaviors related to cancer, as well as their impact factors among construction workers in Hong Kong.ResultsOverall, 1,443 workers participated. Latent class analysis identified four different behavioral classes in the sample. Fully adjusted multiple logistic regression identified age, gender, years of Hong Kong residency, ethnicity, educational level, and living status differentiated behavioral classes.ConclusionHigh levels of lifestyle-related cancer-risk behaviors were found in most of the Hong Kong construction workers studied. The present study contributes to understanding how cancer-related lifestyle risk behaviors cluster among construction workers and relative impact factors of risk behaviors. It is essential to tailor health behavior interventions focused on multiple risk behaviors among different groups for further enlarging the effects on cancer prevention.

Potential of Using BIM for Improving Hong Kong's Construction Industry

Given sizable capital projects in Hong Kong are using BIM from January 2018 on and site safety continues to be a concern for the local construction stakeholders. It is timely to investigate the potential of using BIM for construction safety. This research reveals the potential of using BIM for site safety is strong (85% supported), indicating Hong Kong should engage specific projects to test effectiveness of using BIM for safety, including implementation of safety management system and/or process of risk assessment.

Integrating RFID and BIM technologies for mitigating risks and improving schedule performance of prefabricated house construction

With its generally recognized benefits of clean and safe working environment and good quality, prefabricated house construction (PHC) as a solution is gaining momentum in the face of various housing challenges in Hong Kong's construction industry. Although prefabrication has its own benefits, its fundamental disadvantages of fragmentation, discontinuity, poor interoperability, and scarce real-time information availability have imposed significant adverse influence on the schedule performance of prefabricated house construction. As a result, despite the promise of the government to provide sufficient houses and harmonious housing, schedule delay problems still frequently beset the industry of PHC. To help address schedule delay problems encountered in the construction of prefabrication housing, this research first identified and analysed critical schedule risk factors that may have significant influence on the schedule performance of PHC. Based on the identified schedule risks, the challenges and corresponding required functions for enhancing schedule performance are determined. Then, a radio frequency identification device (RFID)-enabled BIM platform that integrates various involved stakeholders, information/data flow, offshore prefabrication procedures, and state-of-the-art construction technologies, is developed to handle the critical schedule factors. Smart construction objects and RFID-enabled smart gateway work collaboratively to ease operations within the three echelons of prefabrication manufacturing, logistics and on-site assembly construction, while real-time captured data are used to form a closed-loop visibility and traceability mode in which different end users can supervise the construction statuses, progresses in real time. The developed platform can provide various services, tools and mechanisms to different stakeholders, improve the success of daily operations and decision makings throughout PHC management, such that critical schedule risks can be mitigated and the schedule performance of PHC can be enhanced to ensure timely project delivery.

Facilitating effective green procurement in construction projects: An empirical study of the enablers

Given the urgent need to enhance industry practices in a green, safe, and economical manner, facilitating the wider adoption of green procurement in building developments has been a major concern of the construction industry. This paper aims to provide insight into the factors that are important in enhancing green procurement in the construction process and to suggest recommendations for the effective adoption of green procurement through a questionnaire survey and expert interviews. The top three most significant factors identified are mandatory environmental regulations by the government, client requirements in tendering, and government and non-governmental organization requirements. The results of a factor analysis of 35 variables identify 10 underlying grouped factors for facilitating effective green procurement in Hong Kong's construction industry. The factor group “Regulations and standards of green procurement by the government” is the most significant, followed by “Life-cycle considerations and green construction technology” and “Executive management's commitments and requirements.” Efforts or initiatives undertaken by the community and the government on green procurement, such as competitions/awards, incentive schemes, and executives' green procurement commitments and requirements, are considered important in the green procurement process. The experts interviewed indicated that the government should take a proactive role in pushing green procurement adoption. Advanced construction IT (e.g., BIM) should be employed to stimulate the construction process to incorporate a green design approach and reduce waste. In addition, the establishment of a fully functioning green material market would help to promote the concept of green procurement and gradually lower material costs. Active engagement of suppliers to provide the performance details of construction materials is also necessary.

Elderly people as “apocalyptic demography”? A study of the life stories of older people in Hong Kong born in the 1930s

In Hong Kong, the general view still follows the biomedical discourse to define aging. The government and leading gerontologists follow the prevailing representation of elderly and describe growing old as a process of becoming “frail, infirm, and vulnerable” (Fealy et al., 2012: 91). Discussions of demographic trends often focus on the drastic effects of an aging society on economic development. Our research indicates that Hong Kong's construction of aging is a product of its market-driven economy. Drawing from the life stories of eight participants born in the 1930s, we examine the meaning of aging and the formation of character in a specific historical context, adopting the life-course perspective. We wish to understand how larger movements in the social and political world shaped the experiences of the participants and the strategies they developed to maintain agency and control in life. The participants in our study struggled for survival through unprecedented political disasters and social turmoil in their youth. When they reached maturity in the 1960s and 1970s, they devoted themselves to bettering their lives and contributed to the economic boom of the city. We maintain that the biomedical model offers a reductive and unjust means of viewing the people in this cohort, who are often seen as a problem and a burden. Challenging the prevailing ageist attitude, we set the life stories of the participants against the dominant biomedical model of aging. Our work aims to establish a just description of the life experiences of Hong Kong people.

The nexus among employment opportunities, life-cycle costs, and carbon emissions: a case study of sustainable building maintenance in Hong Kong

Hong Kong's construction industry is currently facing problems involving a rapidly aging workforce and labor shortage. With Hong Kong as the case study, this paper illustrates how existing residential buildings can be repaired and maintained using alternative materials, in order to minimize life-cycle labor inputs, costs, or carbon emissions. With different combinations of repair and maintenance materials, two of the three objectives can be achieved at any one time, when labor inputs, costs, and carbon emissions are set as separate constraints. With our methodology, we are able to identify materials that would cost the least, emit minimum carbon levels, and require the right levels of labor resources in relation to residential building maintenance. These can support the adoption of green technologies that suit the socio-economic and physical environment of Hong Kong.

The effectiveness of Hong Kong's Construction Waste Disposal Charging Scheme

The Hong Kong Government introduced the Construction Waste Disposal Charging Scheme in December 2005 to ensure that disposal of construction and demolition (C&D) waste is properly priced to reduce such waste. The charging scheme is not only intended to provide an economic incentive for contractors and developers to reduce waste but also to encourage reuse and recycling of waste material thereby slowing down the depletion of limited landfill and public filling capacities. This paper examines the effectiveness of the charging scheme 1 year after implementation. A survey was conducted at Tseung Kwan O Area 137 and Tuen Mun Area 38, and daily C&D waste records were collected from landfills and public filling facilities between January 2006 and December 2006. The results of the survey show that waste has been reduced by approximately 60% in landfills, by approximately 23% in public fills, and by approximately 65% in total waste between 2005 and 2006. Suggestions for improving the scheme are provided.

Work at Height Fatalities in the Repair, Maintenance, Alteration, and Addition Works

Hong Kong's construction industry has shown significant improvement in safety performance since the turn of the century. The number of industrial accidents in the construction industry has decreased from 11,925 in 2000 to 3,833 in 2004, which is an encouraging drop of almost 68%. However, the category of person from has always represented a large proportion of the industrial accidents, particularly fatal accidents. In 2004, fall of person from height represented just over 47% of the total number of fatal accidents in the construction industry. The statistics show that although the overall number of accidents has dropped immensely, the same does not apply for fall from height accidents. According to statistics provided by the Labor Dept. of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, there were a total of 22 fatal industrial accidents associated with fall of persons from height in repair, maintenance, alteration, and addition works during 2000-2004. When analyzing these case studies, 12 common factors were identified for analyzing these case studies and strategies were suggested to prevent recurrence of similar accidents in each case. The top five strategies were: 1 provide and maintain a safe system of work; 2 provide a suitable working platform; 3tier provide safety information/training/instruction/supervision; 4 tier provide suitable fall arresting system/anchorage; and 5 maintain safe workplace.

A critical investigation of the briefing process in Hong Kong's construction industry

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate briefing in the construction industry in Hong Kong. Specifically, it sets out to discover the current practices on briefing in the industry and the limitations of these practices.Design/methodology/approachThis study consists of a literature review and a pilot study, structured focus group interviews and semi‐structured interviews.FindingsThe study has revealed that current practices, although have been in operation for a long time, have a number of limitations such as lacking in a comprehensive framework; lacking in identification of client requirements; lacking in contributions from clients; lacking in involvement of stakeholders; and inadequate time spent on the briefing. It is concluded that these limitations must be properly addressed by the industry in order to improve the briefing and to avoid subsequent problems in the design and construction phases, and that more resources should be allocated.Originality/valueSo far, little work has been undertaken to study the practice of briefing in sufficient depth in the construction industry in Hong Kong. This paper improves our comprehension of the nature of client requirements and provides valuable insights into the details of briefing in the public and private sectors of the local industry.

IS IT TRAINING IN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY USEFUL?

Though there is a general belief that the investment in information technology (IT) will improve the productivity of the construction industry, the extent to which the construction industry has used IT for strategic advantage has been limited. This study investigates the differences in the use of IT in three major participants of the construction industry in Hong Kong: engineering firms, architectural firms, and quantity surveying firms. In addition, an in-depth interview was carried out with a leading firm in each of the professions for studying the scope of use of IT in Hong Kong's construction industry. The findings reveal some interesting facts that are useful to managers of the construction industry in making decisions on investment in IT.

Behaviour-based safety management in Hong Kong's construction industry: the results of a field study

Hong Kong's construction industry has had a poor site safety record for over a decade. Behaviour-based methods of safety management (BSM) have proved successful in other industries and in other countries. Hence, this study aimed to test the effectiveness of BSM by applying goal-setting and feedback interventions to specific areas of safety performance on Hong Kong Housing Authority construction sites. Using a within-group experimental design and with the use of a proportional rating safety measurement instrument, data were collected on the effectiveness of BSM on Hong Kong sites. The data were recognized as time series data; this has been a serious methodological oversight in much previous research. The data were analysed using autoregressive moving averages models, and the results were mixed in that a significant improvement in safety performance occurred in the housekeeping category of intervention but no improvement was observed in the access to heights and bamboo scaffolding categories. Based on these results a goal setting/expectancy theory model of site safety improvement has been synthesized, and the lack of provision of an adequate safety infrastructure has been identified as a serious impediment to improvement.

Behavior-based safety management in Hong Kong's construction industry

A behavior-based approach to industrial safety management has been advocated by many authors and has been found to effectively improve safety performance in different industrial settings and on different continents. This paper reports on the implementation of a behavior-based safety management program in the Hong Kong construction industry. The behavior-based safety management techniques of performance measurement, participative goal setting, and the provision of performance feedback were introduced in a carefully controlled field experiment on seven public housing construction sites in Hong Kong. The paper describes this experiment and explains how the program was implemented. The results of the experiment were mixed. Behavior-based safety techniques were highly effective in bringing about improved performance in site housekeeping, but significant improvements in access to heights were only observed on two of the seven sites, and there was found to be no significant improvement in the use of bamboo scaffolding during the experimental intervention. The paper presents these results and discusses factors that may have contributed to the limited effectiveness of the techniques in the latter two performance categories.

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.

Leadership style of construction managers in Hong Kong

Hong Kong's construction industry is one of the most dynamic in the world and the Territory has a remarkable record of completing projects to budget in seemingly impossible times. Despite the fact that 97% of the population is Chinese, the Territory remains under British Colonial rule (until 1 July 1997) making Hong Kong a meeting point for Western and Eastern cultures. This mixture of cultures raises interesting managerial issues and an issue particularly relevant to construction project management is leadership behaviour style. This paper studies the leadership styles of Hong Kong Chinese construction managers (by means of Fiedler's Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) scale and House's styles grid) and compares these styles with those of their western counterparts. Hong Kong managers are found to be much more relationship-orientated than their western counterparts. The issue of the effect of situational variables on the style adopted is explored.

Resolving Construction Disputes by Mediation: Hong Kong Experience

This paper reviews the state of the art of modern mediation processes and presents the experience of integrating mediation and arbitration to resolve disputes in Hong Kong's construction industry. Mediation, the principal mode of resolving disputes in ancient China, may have originated in Confucian philosophy, which stresses harmony and compromise. Resolving construction disputes using an adversarial approach such as arbitration is considered to be in opposition to the maintenance of a harmonious relationship between the two parties. The modern arbitration process may duplicate a litigation proceeding, leading to procrastination and cost escalation. The attention of the paper is focused on various dispute‐resolution alternatives such as mediation, which can provide for both time and cost savings. Besides, it is strongly favored by those in the industry that disputes be resolved within the construction industry itself. Hence, mediation is believed to have promising prospects in this field.