Government to review high project construction checks

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has ordered a thorough review of the safety monitoring system for the newly opened Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge to ensure the world’s longest sea crossing is safe.

This is in response to the late submission of more than 10,000 Request for Inspection & Survey Checking (RISC) forms by the Hong Kong Link Road project’s contractor, China State Construction Engineering (Hong Kong), which was tasked with building an HKD8.88 billion connecting road to the mega bridge.

The late papers accounted for 28 per cent of the RISC forms to be handed over to Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong, the project’s engineering consultant. Some of the paperwork was submitted only two years after work had been completed, as reported by Yahoo news.

Lam had instructed transport officials, including Secretary for Transport and Housing Frank Chan Fan and Highways Department chief Jimmy Chan Pai-ming, to assess construction checks and determine if there was room for improvement.

“Once they have some findings, I have asked them to explain in public,” she said on 12 February 2019.

Lawmakers had questioned whether the problem was limited only to some cases or was endemic in the industry.

Similar problems had emerged in the city’s most expensive rail project, the Sha Tin-Central link. The MTR Corporation revealed that a trove of key documents first reported as missing had actually never even been submitted by its main contractor.— Construction+ Online