VISION
- Serve and care for our community by enriching the living environment through quality professional services
ArchSD believes that responsible and ethical governance is the foundation to ensuring sustainability of the department. With our senior management overseeing and directing the overall sustainability strategies and policies of ArchSD, we continue to strive in attaining and upholding a high standard of ethics and professionalism in the interest of all stakeholders.
ArchSD adheres to the highest level of governance, policies and practices set out by the Civil Service Bureau. Our Senior Staff Forum (SSF), chaired by the Director, has in place a management framework to oversee internal operational and sustainability agenda. The SSF develops and regularly reviews Departmental policies, strategies and goals. In addition, we have also established a number of steering committees to monitor different areas of operation of ArchSD.
We have in place a Departmental Quality, Environmental, Health and Safety Policy to provide a favorable working environment and to ensure the long-term sustainable development in our operations.
ArchSD strives to adhere to the below guidelines for all our services and operations:
To ensure our services are on par with international standards and industry best practices, ArchSD has achieved ISO 9001 Quality Management Standard, ISO 14001 Environmental Management Standard and OHSAS 18001 Occupational Health and Safety Management Standard. Our APB Centre in Hung Hom has achieved ISO 50001 Energy Management since 2014. With the aim to drive for continuous improvement, the performance of our integrated management system is monitored and reviewed by the SSF at least once per year.
We proactively monitor and identify emerging risks and seize the opportunity to minimise our negative impacts as far as practicable through mitigation plans. Our risk management approach is to identify, evaluate, mitigate and monitor the potential risks that affects our operations through a comprehensive risk assessments exercise and report to the Department.
For our projects, our risk management assessment exercise strictly follows the guidelines published by the Development Bureau (DEVB), for instance, Technical Circular (Works) No. 6/2005 on 'Implementation of Systematic Risk Management in Public Works Projects'. We take into account the entire lifecycle to manage and control potential risks that will affect our projects. Project teams would carry out integrated risk assessment workshops to identify, evaluate and design effective precautionary control measures to monitor the risks.
ArchSD upholds high standards of integrity and ethics. All staff are required to follow the regulations stated in the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance. Any cases of suspected bribery or corruption shall immediately be brought to the attention of the SSF and the Independent Commission against Corruption for further investigation. During the reporting period, no relevant cases were reported.
We put great emphasis in protecting the employment rights and building the capability of our staff. We fully comply with the Employment Ordinance, and offer our staff with welfare and training opportunities. ArchSD strictly adheres to the safety guidelines published by the DEVB to ensure that provisions such as site safety training, and Pay for Safety Scheme. We have also properly addressed ArchSD Site Safety Model Workers Award Scheme in our works contracts. Labour Relations Officers would be appointed for large-scale construction projects for resolving disputes between contractors and workers in early stage.
Quality of service is also one of our focuses. Every year, we conduct the client satisfactory survey to review on our performance and work quality. We have a dedicated team in handling feedbacks and comments from our clients to drive continuous improvements.
One of our goals in the coming years is to promote the adoption of innovative construction methods such as BIM, MiC and prefabrication to drive for better efficiency in design, production and operation in the construction industry. In addition to implementing these methods, we will continue to put into practice the 'No Frills' principle in design and contractual requirements, the '3S' (Standardisation, Simplification and Single Integrated Element) and other relevant measures to enhance buildability and strengthen cost control.
ArchSD will also continue to incorporate inclusive design in order to improve accessibility and public safety in government buildings. Further studies on advanced building materials and measures to enhance building resilience will also be conducted for operation and sustainability improvement.
Another strategic focus of ArchSD is to drive and enhance knowledge management across Branches and Divisions within ArchSD and promote knowledge sharing amongst relevant stakeholders. We will continue to arrange corresponding training programs on topics including innovative construction and Building Information Modelling (BIM).
We are developing 'Corporate Intelligence (CO-i)' to drive digital transformation. The core of CO-i development is an electronic business platform with linkage to various application systems to promote 'architectural intelligence', including digital site supervision, digital collaboration platform for BIM, electronic submissions and building data analytics, etc. We will also enhance operational efficiency by applying innovations and technologies (I&Ts) in the work process, such as mobile application system, unmanned aerial vehicle, chatbot, artificial intelligence and cloud computing, etc.
ArchSD remains resolute in improving departmental performance. A Departmental Annual Plan (DAP) that encompasses our objectives and targets is prepared annually. In addition, cross-functional review meetings were conducted on a regular basis to review the progress for each objective. Four focus areas were outlined in our DAP 2018/19 and we have marked the highlights of our major achievements as below:
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Enhance design optimisation, innovative construction and cost control |
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ArchSD has established an ongoing stakeholder engagement mechanism to gain a deeper understanding on the opinions, priorities and values of our broad range of stakeholders. We strive to maintain a two- way communication channel to address the needs and build long-term loyalty among our stakeholders. Our engagement channels are summarised as below:
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In preparation of this Report, a total of five independent interviews were undertaken in addition to our ongoing engagement practice with delegates of our key stakeholder groups. Representatives from staff, contractor, professional institution and client were engaged to better understand their concerns and obtain feedback for the continuous improvement in relation to ArchSD's sustainability initiatives and performance.
As a part of our external engagement channel, ArchSD also has designated representatives to provide our recommendations and experience-sharing in professional bodies and external committees including but not limited to:
Through our ongoing stakeholder engagement channels and independent interviews with our key stakeholder groups, we confirmed our prioritised sustainability issues remained unchanged as previous year based on our stakeholder groups' interests in and influence on ArchSD's operation and sustainable development as well as the impacts or potential impacts on them as a result of our operation, services and relationships.
At ArchSD, we aspire to support the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) to contribute to the global sustainability strategy. In this reporting year, we have mapped our sustainability practices to the UNSDGs that we identified as the most relevant with our operations and in which we have the most significant impact on. The boundaries of our Report are set with the following material topics and details of our strategies and practices can be found in the reference chapters.
