2023 was the first year of re-opening after pandemic. GBE has been appointed from many projects. We love to share with the projects in Central, where represents the financial hub of Hong Kong, by Google Earth Studio.
Our Project Hailed on SCMP #5
When out-of-box idea meets GBE, GBE can always turn into reality and yielding asset. The aged building at its 70’s has transformed into modern contemporary look building with all Fire safety, electrical, transportation, structural loading and interior design all well done. Welcome enquiry and you may find more of this interesting upgrading in our website
Our Project Hailed on Sing Tao Daily #1
GBE has positioned the entire property by un-lock the potential through town planning application. GBE leads the team in formulate the section 16, compile the technical consideration and smoothing the transaction process with buyer. The whole property potential is highly visable and realistic for potential buyer.
GBE is glad to be the consultant team
GBE has been invited be the teammates in this wonderful and exciting project. This certainly is such a great experience to work with the professional in worldwide basis .
What we said about “subletting” in semi-government property have proved correct – Lesson Learnt
SCMP – 06TH JUNE 2022 – PAGE A5
The news today in SCMP referred . The HKSTP has confirmed failed to take reasonable step for controlling the lessee from sub-letting to 2nd or third tier of leasee. For us, it was not surprised , when we firstly highlighted the issue of mini-storage , shared office , co-working space which are all featured with 3rd tier of leasee in the lease structure, we have made notice to the issue about subletting down drifting the lease structure. Honestly, this kind of issue won’t be materialistic in private property like many in urban area, but it becomes profoundly sharp in the organisation such as HKSTP or probably other similar organisation which are duty-bound to some mission pushed forward by Government. To exemplify, we foresee the place such as West Kowloon Cultural area, Cyber port , Productive council ,…. may be in the rader.
More to discuss later
Hong Kong Surveyor in Australia Residential Projects with BIM
Great news to our industry. We have successfully extended our professional foot-print to Australia market. With the BIM technology backup and the Professional Knowledge, the residential projects has been accelerated from ground works, drainage works and now to timber structure. We are now in the process of window frame installation , which is posited in the cavity wall.
The land administration system there is alike to other commonwealth countries , where GBE has rided on similar system in UK. The country of the sub-urban took lead on the development control and impose the development constraint varying to the prevailing policy. They pose heavy emphasis to waste management , vehicles control and water supply system. Thus, when we entered into the Building permit stage, all the prerequisite requirement must meet the schematic approval .
The picture below is the ground sub-structure together with the drainage downpipe. The 2nd picture is the erection of the timber structure in pre-designed lattice form. To attain the insulation performance, cavity wall will be in place.
Picture 1
Picture 1
Picture 2
Hong Kong Surveyor in Overseas Project in today Pandemic
Though we are restricted travelling these day, the advanced telecommunication and BiM Technology has taken us far digitally.
Being a Hong Kong Surveyor, we are glad to participate in one small scale development project in Australia, a market where experienced a lot of upsurging in last 2 years.
From the professional perspective , the planning control there is highly similar to what we have practicing in Hong Kong . Indeed, the planning condition from local Australia Government has tightened and deepened control on both the construction details as well. The project program is usually short given the construction complexity is lower , but the distorted global supply chain and the shortage of labour there are hitting the progress.
Like Hong Kong and UK, there are Building control after the planning permission, but the Australian government is running the private sector manning the private sector . Developer, usually the professional Builder, will deploy the Building Surveyor to check and sign off the plan. Given the honest system, and accountability of the Surveyor upheld, there are usually sometime a conflicting view between the Builder’s and Surveyors. Well, a water running under the bridge at the end.
My office is glad to be the surveyor from Hong Kong to oversee the entire development. We have applied the latest BiM to showcase the design, progress and program. Though we were restricted going there , we mastered the entire progress at this moment. Good luck to us
(Sorry for all not be able to disclose more under NDA)
Drone inspection Paradox – Speaking from Professional
Drone application in the view from Professional Surveyor
As drone technology, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) , becomes increasingly mature and commercialized, the real estate industry has jumped at its potential for building inspection.
Use of Drone in Construction field / inspection
Drone technology contributes to the construction field in several ways. It can be used to capture a full picture and provide a solid understanding of the site. It can help in constructing a progress model that assists in monitoring construction process with ease.
Theory Vs Practical and Professional
In theory, it is an elegant solution that allows inspection to be carried out on areas that are hard to access. In addition, some IT Engineer alleged that an accurate diagnosis of the building could be be exponentially enhanced by AI. Though, we have had a lot of reservation to this AI application theoretically. However, the actual application of drone technology in building inspection can be less than optimal and costlier than previously believed. Aside from all the hype, it may not stack up against other alternative building inspection technologies and methods.
Professional Surveyor Feedback to Drone application
While UAV can reach areas that are difficult to reach, they have their own physical limitations in professional building surveying.
Physical Limitations includes:
Hardware Limitations
- UAV has a general altitude limitation of 90m and the image pixel is limited at 1084-2k in most models. The image via the controller is usually compressed for storage, at an even lower resolution. For some inspection which demands close visual inspection, such as sealant shape, cracks on the wall, damp patches mark, deformation of materials, rusty stain etc. The image captured are lust loss and become unreliable.
Glare from the reflective surface
- Drone operation is heavily dependent on weather conditions. Sunlight can cause glare on reflective surfaces, rendering footage and image unusable. Should there is strong reflective sunlight, the image becomes glared with distorted illusion background .
Insufficient data for thousand type of variation to build machine learning
- AI diagnosis for building inspection is often mentioned as a feature together with drones. AI is built on top of a massive database that promises diagnosis and predictive ability. However, buildings vary by many elements, such as building envelope, height, location, profile, and usage. Furthermore, buildings are dictated by regulations as a product of the location, weather and idiosyncratic factors. There simply isn’t enough data available to power AI to be a blanket solution to building inspection. Currently, professional knowledge is still essential to interpret information generated by AI.
Safety and Lack of Standardization
- There are designated No Fly Zones due to congested buildings, privacy, securities, etc. In addition drones application is not standardized for UAV inspection deliverables. One very rare known limitation is the safety distance between the building and the drone, many drone model is designed to be in hold position when the drone intervenes into the safety distance. This distance makes the image captured ability be doubtful.
Form over substance
Professional Knowledge is indispensable and cannot be replaced by UAV or AI currently. Having said that, drones can assist Surveyor in capturing images, reference pictures and preliminary scans prior to on-site survey. Unfortunately, it may upset the Surveyor owning to the image reliability.
Drone application and 360 Cam
Our feed previously posted has presented the 360 Cam for capturing in centimetre distance to the external wall. The image is sent via data to the mobile phone. The inspector can inspect the physical object with the immediate aid of 360 image .
Be a smart user to technology
Always be handy to the technology can advance your professional skill. On the contrary, too much fantasy to the technology will be ended with effort abortive
Hand-free Toilet
In the week between May 7th and 15th, 867 COVID-19 infections were found in Thailand Simmummuang fruit and vegetable market. Health investigators in Thailand identified the entrance of the public toilet as the suspected source of most infections. This rises our concern on the infection possibility of public toilets in Hong Kong.
Simmummuang fruit and vegetable market: https://www.bastillepost.com/hongkong/article/8489819-%e6%b3%b0%e8%a1%97%e5%b8%82%e7%88%86867%e4%ba%ba%e6%96%b0%e5%86%a0%e7%a2%ba%e8%a8%ba-%e5%8e%9f%e5%85%87%e7%ab%9f%e6%98%af%e5%85%ac%e5%bb%81
Transmission Route in Public Toilets
According to Joseph Allen, associate professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, public toilets can be an important source of COVID-19 spread. The major way of spread are flushing and touching.
When toilet water contains viruses and bacteria, the churning and bubbling of water creates particles that will float in the air. These viruses and bacteria will spread around the toilet, linger in the air and settle onto surfaces in the toilet. COVID-19 can survive in the air for 3 hours and even up to 24 hours in paper. Hence, the possible transmission route are people breathing in viruses when flushing and people touch installations in the toilets which viruses and bacteria settled.
COVID-19 in toilets: https://specialty.mims.com/topic/covid-19-in-hospitals–toilets–staff–public-areas-show-contamination-
Ways to Prevent Infection in Public Toilets
In Hong Kong, the most common way to prevent infection in public toilets are wearing mask, wash hands after using the toilet and increase disinfecting arrangements. Nonetheless, these precautions still remain some loopholes in our dense against COVID-19. One common example is after washing hands, people still need to hold the door handle and open the door. If there are some viruses settled on the door handle before, the people will also get in touch with the viruses and may get infected if he or she then touch his or her mouth, nose or eyes. This example is just a tip of an iceberg, in public toilets, not only we need to touch door handles, but also push button toilet flush, faucet handle, soap dispenser handle, etc.. The more we touch, the higher the possibility that we are infected.
Touching doors in toilets: https://health.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-information/coronavirus-mistakes.html
Touching Flush Button: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/public-bathrooms-carry-coronavirus-risks-heres-how-to-be-careful
To close up the loopholes, the best ways is to reduce the amount of viruses and bacteria spreading from flushing and minimize the need of touching in public toilets.
Reduce Viruses from Flushing
People no need to touch the toilet lid, the lid will automatically opens and closes when nearing or leaving the toilet. Therefore, even when people forget to close the toilet lid, the auto open/close lid will close the lid and reduce the amount of viruses and bacteria spreading.
Minimize the need for Touching
Although closing the toilet lid will reduce the amount of bacteria and viruses comes from flushing, there are still risk of getting infected in public toilets as it cannot minimize the amount of bacteria and viruses to 0. As a result, another effective precaution will be minimize the need for touching in public toilet, that is, to update a traditional toilet into a hand-free toilet. Here are the lists of installations in hand-free toilets.
- Auto Toilet Door
- Auto Flush Sensor
- Auto Trash Bin
- Auto Toilet Seat Sanitiser Dispenser
- Auto Toilet Paper Dispenser
- Auto Tissue Dispenser
- Auto Soap Dispenser
- Auto Faucet
- Auto Door
- Auto Hand Dryer
No ones knows when this pandemic will end, but we can try out best to minimize the possible spreading routes. Wearing mask and frequent disinfection are ways preventing viruses getting into our body, while upgrading toilets to hand-free toilets are smart ways to reduce the amount of bacteria exists in toilets. GBE will keep updating different measures to stop transmission route for the public to fight COVID-19.
GBE welcomes comments from professionals and enquiries from the Public
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