| Hong Kong Housing Authority / Hong Kong Housing Department Web Site | |
| [Home] [English Version] [Traditional Chinese Version] [Simplified Chinese Version] [Graphical Version] [Close] |
| Environmental, Health and Safety Report 2003 / 04
Our Vision for Sustainable Housing | Message from the Chairman | Message from the Director | Summary | Feedback Form About this Report | Business Overview & EHS Management Structure | Significant EHS Aspects | 2003 / 04 Highlights | Performance Review | Targets and Initiatives for 2004 / 05 and Beyond | Verification Statement | Annexes |
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 For the remaining five targets that are behind schedule or withdrawn, the difficulties in meeting the targets have been reviewed.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.
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. 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 [Photo: Daylight study inside building.] 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. [Photo: Wind Environmental Study in Ngau Tau Kok.] 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. top |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[(c) 2004 All Rights Reserved] |