Case Study

Hong Kong Housing Authority specifies the use of certified products and uses certified management systems

The Hong Kong Housing Authority builds an average of 20000 flats per year for the public sector of Hong Kong. The quality of building materials and components is always of prime concern to the Housing Authority and the industry since rework of any non-complying building products would have time & cost implications to the housing projects. Housing Authority fully recognizes that product certification is an upstream quality control process and it offers higher quality assurance through regular rigorous audits by a competent third party certification body.

Since 2010, the Housing Authority has specified the requirement of using certified products for ten major building materials in its construction projects. This initiative expedites the development of product certification for construction materials. Other than those building materials specified by Housing Authority, more construction product certification schemes had also been developed or are being developed (e.g. steel reinforcement, paints, mechanical couplers, aggregate products, etc) per the requirement of various stakeholders.  Product certification provides a reliable means for assuring production quality throughout the whole production process from incoming raw materials, production, inspection, sample selection and testing, traceability, etc thus making available certified construction products of quality for use in building projects.

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As well as specifying the use of certified products for building materials in its construction projects, the Hong Kong Housing Authority makes extensive use of management systems standards to deliver better performance in a number of areas. For example, the Authority’s Mid-Year Performance Review of the 2013/14 Corporate Plan  states that certification to ISO 50001 Energy Management system standard has been achieved at its Kwai Shing West Estate.

The above Review additionally states in section 3.11, ‘To further enhance the quality of estate management and to develop a comfortable and healthy living environment for our PRH tenants, we (the Hong Kong Housing Authority) had implemented the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System Certification programme in planned maintenance and improvement works for all estates as well as in property management since 2010. We had successfully obtained the ISO 14001 certification for property management for all estates in July 2013.’