Massive railway development can be expected in Hong Kong over the next decade and beyond. Despite its small land area, Hong Kong’s present population of 6.5 million is likely to reach 10 million or more in a decade. A large proportion of them will need to travel by train.
Hong Kong's central urban areas are rapidly filling up and cannot sprawl any further. Accommodation near one's workplace is prohibitively expensive, and so many new towns have sprung up, such as Sha Tin, Tai Po, Yuen Long Tuen Mun and Tseung Kwan. People who live in a new town and work in the central urban area have to travel relatively long distances to work, and good public transport connections are essential.
Many of the buses in use today are highly polluting, emitting clouds of black smoke and fumes due perhaps to poor maintenance or the use of low-grade diesel fuel from China.Since much of Hong Kong's electric power is generated using natural gas, electric railways are seen as being non-polluting, and thus the transport mode of the future.
Building in safety
DNV is one of the consultants in Hong Kong working for the two railway companies, Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) and Kowlon Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC) to provide systems (safety and reliability) assurance of the design of new railway projects.
But just designing in safety is not the only problem to be solved. Railways must first be built, and the construction industry has the worst safety record in Hong Kong, with risks approaching one death per worker per thousand years.
For its new Westrail Project of suburban railway construction, KCRC required its contractors to implement safety management systems and demonstrate by auditing that such systems were in place and being operated. After reviewing the available systems KCRC identified DNV's International Safety Rating System (ISRS) as the best. KCRC follows a competitive tendering system which weighs technical merit against the fee quoted. Scoring very highly technically, DNV won the contract to audit all of the KCRC Westrail Construction Contractors annually until late 2003 (74 audits), with an option to include contractors for the forthcoming Eastrail Extensions through to 2004. In addition, DNV has provided safety training to all of Westrail's Construction Safety Department. The contract requires a digital camera to record physical conditions, and a digital projector to present the audit findings, including photos.
DNV and KCRC jointly developed a definition of 'acceptable' performance for the contractors. The penalty for not achieving acceptable performance is for a milestone payment to be withheld. The ultimate target (after 18 months) is to achieve an average score of at least 40 overall scoring over 16 elements specified by KCRC, a minimum of 20% individual element scoring and a minimum of 65'5 physical conditions, with continuous improvement in the meantime. This performance standard is approximately equivalent to a Level Five rating of the ISRS. The elements and sub-elements included were based on legal requirements, contractual requirements, requirements in the safety auditing systems, international safety performance levels and the local construction safety performance level.
The contract has benefited from two 3-4 week visits from an auditor and trainer form the U.K., highly experienced in contractor auditing, who has led some of the early training courses and audits, and subsequently form a highly experienced safety professional and auditor familiar with Hong Kong and the construction industry in Asia.
Rapid provision of audit reports
Morale on the project has been excellent, with high scores being achieved by KCRC personnel in course tests, training audits and in their own divisional audit. Reporting is greatly streamlined by use of DNV Summit, computerised report-writing software for which a customised audit question set uses just the 16 relevant elements and sub-elements. A special report template has been developed to meet the requirements of the brief. We are able to conduct an audit, prepare the report and QA the work in just over a week. This means that the audit is still fresh in the contractor's mind when he receives the report. The report also contains photographs of physical conditions observed by the auditor. Examples of non-conformities include incorrect or non-use of personal safety equipment, and dangerous practices such as welding near inflammable materials.
As the he former tiger economies of Asia emerge from financial turmoil, big infrastructure projects are starting up again, as with the monorail in Kuala Lumpur, and the Taiwan High Speed Rail project, where DNV is to carry out systems assurance for the only underground station on the line.
There is great potential for DNV gaining similar contracts for new railway construction throughout Asia.
Date: 2000-12-15