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Meeting Environmental,
Health and Safety Targets
At the Housing Authority (HA) we continue to work closely with residents,
property managers and our other business partners to meet all environmental,
health and safety (EHS) performance targets.
During the year 2003 / 04 we had set 48 environmental targets
and nine health and safety targets. Of these, we fully completed the health
and safety targets. Of the 48 environmental targets, 33 were completed.
Together with another 10 targets of substantial progress, we have achieved
a similar level of completion at around 90% as of the previous year. The
outstanding works are all expected to be completed in the second quarter
of 2004.
For the remaining five targets that are behind schedule or withdrawn, the
difficulties in meeting the targets have been reviewed. For example our
target for reduced water consumption was not achieved largely due to the
increased water demand for our intensive cleaning programme following the
outbreaks of SARS and Avian Influenza. Also, our waste recovery target in
our housing estates was under-performed due to the diversion of recovered
waste materials by private collectors for resale. The introduction for electronic
submission of application forms for Home Assistance Loan Scheme was deferred
after consideration of its cost-effectiveness. The corresponding Key Performance
Indicators of these targets for future years have subsequently been reviewed
to a level that sets a more realistic challenge.
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For the year 2004 / 05, due to the cutback
in flat production, we have preliminarily set 37 EHS targets. Most of these
targets will be a continuation of current initiatives, but we have included
five new targets for health and safety initiatives.
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Legislative
Compliance
Regarding the EHS performance of our contractors during the year, there
were eight convictions due to environmental non-compliance: one for air,
six for construction noise and one for water pollution. This is an improvement compared to 20 convictions received in 2002 / 03.
There were also 67 health and safety convictions against our construction
sites during the year. Of these, 38 were due to public health non-compliance
and 29 were on site safety. The convictions cases on public health primarily
associated with mosquito breeding were increased from 13 such convictions
in 2002 / 03. The upsurge of these cases during 2003 / 04
was due to increased enforcement of anti-mosquito measures in the wake of
outbreaks of Dengue Fever and Japanese Encephalitis. We have targeted for
significant improvement in 2004 / 05.
Year-on-year, the number of industrial accidents in our construction sites
has fallen by 28% at our new works sites to 195 incidents, and by nearly
50% during maintenance works to 60 incidents.
Building
EHS Performance
In recent years we have been enhancing the planning and design of our new
buildings with the aid of computerized fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques.
Using CFD we have studied the effects of microclimate on the users around
and within our buildings, including simulations of pedestrian wind environment,
natural ventilation, daylighting and heat gain for sun movement, indoor
air quality, thermal comfort, etc.
By the end of 2004, we will complete microclimate
research, which was being carried out for seven public housing projects
under planning. To assess the effectiveness of these studies, the environmental
performance of these ongoing projects will be evaluated and ranked against
the Hong Kong Building Environmental Assessment Method (HKBEAM) to help
us identifying gaps in environmental building performance and making the
necessary design improvements.
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