A review of buildability performance in Hong Kong and strategies for improvement

Whilst the Construction Industry Review Committee (CIRC) report highlights the room for improving design buildability in Hong Kong, very few studies have been conducted to examine the issues in the local context. This paper, therefore, aims to expound the current state of buildability performance in Hong Kong, and recommends strategies for needed improvements. Various indicators, including construction cost, output statistics, and the degree of involvement of construction experts in design development, have been examined. The analysis has been supplemented and confirmed through the interview of practitioners whose views echoed the CIRC’s findings that little emphasis is placed on buildability during design development. To reduce the waste of resources and the constraints due to comparatively low productivity, measures to uplift the standards of design buildability are necessary. To this end, the increased use of prefabrication and the benchmarking of building designs using a Buildability Assessment Model (BAM) are proposed. The deliberations in the formulation of the BAM have built the solid ground works for developing improvement measures to uplift the overall buildability of building designs in Hong Kong, in addition to fostering a sustainable built environment.