With regard to arrests made by the Independent Commission Against Corruption at a construction site at Anderson Road, the Buildings Department (BD) said it has been actively co-operating with the commission’s investigation, and emphasised that illegal or non-compliant behaviours would not be tolerated.

The arrests relate to the suspected offering and accepting of advantages.

The BD received a report last August alleging that steel reinforcements in some structural elements of the superstructure works at six blocks of residential buildings under construction had not been installed in accordance with standards under the Buildings Ordinance. It then sent staff to conduct on-site inspections four times in September.

Having found that the number of steel reinforcements installed at some beams was lower than required by the approved plans, the department ordered the cessation of works at the entire site in October.

Subsequently, departmental staff carried out further site inspections, conducted interviews and collected project information. This included opening up concrete at various locations and testing the concrete’s strength.

To date, inspections have revealed major deviations from the approved plans in the installation of steel reinforcements. This includes positional discrepancies, the displacement of reinforcements, discrepancies in the size of reinforcements, and fewer  reinforcements than are shown in the plans.

The BD said it is consulting the Department of Justice on prosecution against the relevant individuals.

Elaborating on the situation, it said inspections indicated that the quantity of main steel reinforcements within structural components is, on average, below 10% less than that in the approved plans. Taking into account the overall configuration of the steel reinforcements and the load-bearing design of the adjacent concrete walls, the department considered that no obvious danger is posed to the overall structure.

It added that it has requested that the project’s registered structural engineer and registered contractor submit an incident report and stipulate remedial measures including localised strengthening of the buildings, demolition of part of the structural elements where necessary, reinstalment of the steel reinforcements, and concrete recasting.

Separately, the department noted that the main contractor of the Anderson Road project is also the “registered general building contractor” of five other private developments under construction. In view of the Anderson Road incident, the department has stepped up inspections of these five developments. Measures taken include doubling the number of surprise site inspections and audit checks on completed concrete structural elements using non-destructive covermeter testing technology.

No deviation in the quantity and positioning of steel reinforcements from the approved plans and no obvious structural safety issues have been found, the department stated.

To ensure building safety, it added that it will write to the developers of the five developments requesting them to carry out a number of measures.

These include urging their appointed registered structural engineers to conduct a comprehensive review of all supervision records for steel reinforcement installations at the sites concerned; submitting to the BD within two months a review report and a testing proposal for checking the installation of steel reinforcements; engaging an independent accredited laboratory to conduct the tests; and submitting an independent testing report to the BD.

The BD emphasised that the Anderson Road case is a rare incident, and that the current regulatory system for building works is robust and well-functioning. Nonetheless, it will review the experience from this case and double the number of construction sites subject to audit inspections of steel reinforcements prior to the casting of concrete at sites, from the current annual sampling rate of at least 12% to at least 25% of projects.

With regard to the configuration of steel reinforcements after the casting of concrete, the BD will, using covermeter technology for sampling tests, also conduct audit checks with an annual sampling rate of 25% of projects as a regularised practice.