Are tight deadlines why Hong Kong construction sites are not safer?

While accident rates have fallen over the past decade, the numbers remain sticky
The mentality prioritising speed at all costs must change – safe working practices take a back seat when workers are under pressure to deliver

Clement Chan

Published: 9:30am, 1 May 2024

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My most vivid memory from construction industry training at university is the motto “fast, ruthless and accurate”. That was what we were told – in Cantonese – our construction workers have to be.

For me, this phrase defines not only the culture in Hong Kong’s construction industry but much of our society. I’ll admit that this mentality is sometimes necessary. In some industries it may even be essential. But, on construction sites, it has manifested itself in a series of accidents and fatalities over the years.

If you have ever managed to read the “original completion date” on the ubiquitous roadside display boards as your minibus speeds past, you may have noticed that most, if not all, of these projects overrun their stated deadlines.

Tight deadlines mean workers are perpetually in a rush to finish their job, almost at any cost. As a result, safe working practices take a back seat. Other issues may also arise, such as fatigue or even burnout. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to workers becoming careless.

Still, looking at the statistics, some progress has been made.

The Labour Department publishes accident and fatality statistics for the construction industry each year. The Development Bureau, meanwhile, publishes statistics for the construction industry and for public works contracts, although it is not clear if the category “construction industry” includes public works contracts.

Firefighters attend a West Kowloon Cultural District construction site in Austin Road on September 24, 2023, after two Hong Kong workers were found dead in a suspected biogas leak. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

According to the Labour Department, the number of industrial accidents in the construction industry has hovered between 3,000 and 4,000 every year over the past decade. However, the accident rate has steadily fallen from over 40 accidents per 1,000 workers a decade ago, to under 30 per 1,000 workers in 2022, the last full year for which statistics are available. This is mainly due to an upward trend in the number of workers over the past decade.

The statistic does not consider the number of hours each employee works. The likelihood of encountering an accident when 100 workers put in an average of 40 hours each week, would, assuming everything else is constant, be the same as that of 200 workers doing 20 hours each week. Yet the accident rate for the latter would look better on paper.

Nevertheless, the statistics published by the Development Bureau, which records accident rates per 100,000 man-hours worked, also showed a fall from a peak of just over 0.5 accidents per month (per 100,000 man-hours worked) in mid-2017 to under 0.2 in mid-2022. Again, this is just for public works contracts, but it is likely that the numbers for the construction industry as a whole have followed this trend.

But even one fatality is one too many. Over the past decade, between 30 and 55 fatalities were recorded each year on construction sites.

Opinions from within the industry are a mixed bag. Some point the finger at management, others think safety officers could be doing a better job. But I believe the problem is an overemphasis on speed amid tight deadlines.

A mural of construction workers made by Belgian artist Jaune is seen on a wall at Lan Kwai Fong Hotel in Hong Kong’s Central district, on April 8, as part of the HKWALLS Street Art Festival 2024. Photo: Eugene Lee

I concede that this is not a widely held view even within the industry. However, some literature does support my stance. In a 2022 study on safety in large-scale construction projects, the researchers found that time pressure was “detrimental to the motivation of learning from failure”.

Limited time “leaves organizations with no systematic way to decide what actions to take or not to take”, they noted. And as most participants in large-scale construction projects have technical backgrounds, accident analysis “often focuses on technical problems and actions to improve the technology, and human and organisational problems are rarely solved”.

Calls to check contractor safety measures after death of 2 Hong Kong workers

A 2014 study, meanwhile, shed light on the bottlenecks that appear in each step of the learning process, while a 2017 study found that the pressure of meeting deadlines could result in the implementation of occupational safety measures being relegated to the background.

The Hong Kong Construction Association, which represents over 300 companies, recently launched a trial scheme to monitor workers’ compliance with safety measures. Suggestions based on their findings will be submitted to the Construction Industry Council, which is planning to launch a citywide scheme later this year.

Like the waste-charging trial, no doubt this will meet some resistance and require fine-tuning. But it is a step in the right direction. I sincerely hope the industry can build on improvements made over recent years.

Clement Chan is a full-time landfill engineer and freelance copywriter and translator