The Buildings Department (BD) today said it found through its monitoring mechanism that two registered contractors violated the compliance requirements regarding scaffold nets which were not procured through the Construction Industry Council (CIC). 

One of the cases involved a contractor that had installed scaffold nets prior to obtaining a test report confirming compliance, involving repair works in an existing building. 

In the other case, the contractor installed a batch of scaffold nets with test reports failing to meet the standards, involving a construction site of a new building. 

The BD has ordered the contractors to remove non-compliant nets and is investigating the irregularities, adding that it will take punitive action against the parties involved in accordance with the investigation results.

The department promulgated new tracking and testing requirements for scaffold nets in December last year.

A media report today claimed that there was a case in which sampling tests had been conducted in accordance with the new requirements and a test report was obtained with results that met the fire retardant performance standards. The nets were installed on scaffolding. However, after installation, an audit check by the BD revealed that the scaffold nets did not meet the required standards and removal was required.

The BD made it clear that there was no such case to date.

It pointed out that it has only recently started receiving notifications on completion of scaffold net installation and random testing of installed scaffold nets has just commenced. So far, samples have been collected from three cases that have completed net installation, not involving the scaffold nets procured collectively by the CIC and have been or will shortly be sent to the Government Laboratory for testing. Test results are not yet available.