TABLE OF CONTENTS - The Professional Green Building Council

Theme B: Creating a livable, healthy and environmentally viable citiescontractors to participate. The outcome was promising. Stakeholders in theindustry began to be exposed to these new technologies both in design offices and onsite. However, in the later years, not many of these international contractors couldsustain their business because of the higher overhead costs and their difficulty inmanaging local subcontractors. In the early 1990’s, leading local contractors wereencouraged to develop their own precasting systems to suit the Hong Kong context,drawing experience from the international contractors and from experience inSingapore which has a similar form of construction of medium rise buildings.5. MORE PREFABRICATION IN DESIGNFollowing the design of precast facades, more prefabrication had been developed.These precast components are reckoned to be “for a purpose” within their differentlocations and contexts, which are elaborated as follows:-a) Semi-precast slabs, tie beams and staircasesTo prefabricate these components in factory instead of constructing it at workingfloors. The latter would require relatively substantial formwork/falsework on site,which might be vulnerable to poor workmanship and have severe safety concerns.Figure 5: Semi-precast Slab386