Student Participation in Building the Learning Environment: Establishing Virtual Database of Construction Standards for Hong Kong

Description

Establishing Hong Kong's own construction standards will involve an enormous amount of financial commitment when comparing with other countries. However, the lack of a consistent series of construction standards in Hong Kong has resulted in a number of problems in the Industry and also the tertiary programmes such as Construction Engineering Education and related courses and programmes at BEng, BSS at out Department.For example: One can easily find a host of different national standards (e.g., BS, DOT, ASHRAE, DIN, JIS, ASTM, ANSI, AAMA, AS, EN, ISO, etc.) being cited in the specifications for a single project. This will hinder the application of the strongly advocated performance-based specifications for the application in building construction. (BC200 I & BC2111 Building Technology, Construction Environment)The lack of a common basis on construction standards results in inconsistent acceptance criteria, rejection of comparable alternatives submitted by contractors, delays in approval, disputes, and confusion to building material manufacturers and suppliers; (BC4145 Building Design Project)The borrowed overseas standards may not fit Hong Kong's contextual situations such as different weather, the corrosive environment and trade practices; (BC2111, Construction Environment)Owing to different standards used and inconsistent acceptance criteria, this gives ways to under-table dealings and social corruption; (BC34 I I & BC 4412, Construction and Project Management)As a result, it leads to confusions, even within the works departments of the Hong Kong government. However, to establish construction standards for Hong Kong, everything needs to start from scratch. In order to avoid the confusion and uncertainty after graduation to the industry for this area, it is proposed to developing a Virtual Database of Construction Standards (VBSS) for Hong Kong with Student Participation.