By John Lam Asset Enhancement • Building Law • Building Technology • Uncategorized • • 0 Comments

Coring the rock stratum engineering our pile foundation

Site investigation is a term to cover a lot of aspect about the site. For the Engineer in construction site, it means the process to find out the soil and rock condition. From the project management perspective, we see the most essence is whether the quality control system is working well in place . This control system involves sampling , inspection, recording and counter-check. Although the PNAP has imposed a lot of restrains in the site investigation, the entire controlling mechanism still heavily rely on the professional site staff. The sample taken will be inspected the the engineer. This inspection is to be fed back to the Designer to confirm the design assumption of piling coincide well to what happens on site. This is the feedback loop essentially important in the entire QA process.

I witness the coring process and I can say the coring of soil / rock is not a pleasant job. Sometimes, the sample was damaged in the process, sometimes, the sample was dropped in pieces. Thus , a good sampling and coring process did demand patience by labour, right machine set up, on-site engineer inspection and recording.

 

 

By John Lam Asset Enhancement • Building Law • • • 0 Comments

Senior Citizen Housing display away the stranded podium retail asset

Senior Citizenship house is now calling for de-densitified 

Why the World’s Highest Virus Death Rate Is in Europe’s Capital

Senior Citizen becomes the upset topic of today C -19 prevalence. Many asset managers are looking the way to improve the stranded property for post c-19. GBE noticed the demand for de-densitified the habitation has triggered the call for more Senior Citizenship habitation houses.

In the metropolitan like Hong Kong, the aged population also faces the strong need for sleeping accommodation. The podium floors which are worst hit by declining retails business, is now hot for turning into elderly center. GBE shares with you that the technical constraint in premises for elderly houssuch window provision, headroom, DMC restriction, town planning ,street level entrance for emergency , catering and sanitary provision, supporting facilities, and operation needs. The licensing authority is Social Welfare Department while the law is Residential Care Homes (Elderly Persons) Ordinance.

By John Lam Building Law • Real Estate • • • • • 0 Comments

Paradox of “Area” in Building of Hong Kong

There are a ranges of terms from “Usable Floor Area / space – UFA , “Saleable Area – SA ” , “Gross Floor Area – GFA “, ” Internal Floor Area – IFA” , “Common Area – CA”, “Lettable Area – LA ” and “Construction Floor Area – CFA” to describe and present the “area” of the space in numerical way. The confusion of amongst these terms stems from the different definition of their respective legal context, code of practice and the application. In short, “Usable Floor Area” is originated from Buildings Ordinance for population estimation in a proposed space whereas the Saleable area is for property conveyance in First Hand sale. The “Common Area” is the idea coming from Deed of Mutual Covenant and Building Management Ordinance. On the contrary, “Construction Floor Area” is for construction cost estimation and this area covers also the ceiling and wall face area.

Hong Kong Institute of Surveyor has published the “Code of Measuring Practice” MPracticeCode-199903 (1) There has laid some quick understanding to the “area”.

residential area of the city at dusk,bird’s eye view

 

 

By Cindy Kwok Building Law • • • 0 Comments

Macau Land Law No. 10/2013

In 2015, the Macau government has announced one of the most influential amendment to the land law no 10/2013 . It expressly empowers the government to forfeiture/terminate/revoke of land tenure if there was no development being executed as per the land contract. This becomes very alarming for property investor.

The law permits some excuses for the landlord if they can show the reasons why tenure non-fulfillment persists. Engineering technical reasons are usually considered acceptable if it is convincing.

In 2020, the post-pandemic has caused many asset be evaluated and be available for sale. Property investor must pay enough attention for the effective tenure legitimacy.