Hong Kong Infection Control Center: Construction, Stakeholders And Significance

Project Description

A new Infection Control Center (HKICC) with 136 Negative Pressure Wards and 816 beds was constructed in January 2021 by the Hong Kong Government to deal with COVID-19. In Hong Kong, this was the first MiC-built Infection Control Center. As a result, the project was completed in a fraction of the time of a conventional hospital. Its goal is to increase the capacity of the Hospital Authority (HA) to deal with additional surges of COVID-19 patients expected in the upcoming wave. Project administration for the temporary hospital is in the hands of the Development Bureau and Architectural Services Department. The user, HA, is in charge of ordering and delivering services. Hong Kong Infection Control Centre was the name given to the temporary hospital, which was under the supervision of North Lantau Hospital (NLTH).

Medical services in Hong Kong have never been the same since the establishment of the HKICC. Modular integrated building technology was used to build the first hospital with negative pressure isolation units. When teams and departments worked together, the project was finished in just 120 days. A little more than a month after the hospital’s handover to the HA on January 22, laboratory services got underway, and barely five weeks later, the first patient was admitted to the ward.

There are six ward facilities, a healthcare structure, a main electromechanical system construction, and other associated structures in the project.  All aspects of the project adhere to Hong Kong’s long-term building codes and regulations. Only the operating room isn’t built up per the Hospital Authority’s suggestion; otherwise, the hospital is set up like any other.

This report focuses on various stakeholders which took part in the design and construction of

Hong Kong Infection Control Centre and their roles and significance.

Project Stakeholders

People who have an interest in or care for a project or business’s operations are known as stakeholders. A construction project has a wide range of stakeholders because of the large range of elements that might affect a project’s success.

Every project has a set of stakeholders, regardless of industry, who must be recognized and engaged in order to ensure that the project’s limits, as well as dangers to its success, are recognized, understood, and dealt with effectively (Doloi, 2013).

Here, I’ll present an outline of both the internal and external stakeholder groups that are directly or indirectly affected by construction businesses and their projects. 

Figure 1: Project stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders (Client: Architectural Services Department, Hong Kong Government and Hospital Authority (HA), Main contractor: China State Construction, medical personnel and workers in the facility)

Internal stakeholders are those who are actively engaged in the day-to-day operations of the company. Stakeholders have a stake in the company, therefore their success or failure might have a direct impact on or be influenced by the company.

The term “primary stakeholders” refers to those who are internal to an organization. In addition to providing goods and services to the firm, these stakeholders also play an important role in influencing its decisions and results. All the facility’s internal difficulties are also known to them. Internal stakeholders include the company’s workers, owners, board members, and investors, as well as anybody else involved in the company’s management (Mashali et al., 2020). In the end, all of these have a direct impact on the company’s operations and are essential to its existence.

Stakeholders in Construction Projects

Stakeholders from within the facility typically have a large effect on how it operates. When it comes to key company choices, owners are the ones you turn to. In addition, managers and workers are actively involved in the day-to-day operations of a firm and make a variety of business choices on a regular basis.

External Stakeholders

A company’s external stakeholders are all those people, groups, enterprises and organizations that are not immediately affected by the facility’s success. A company’s performance and success may attract these stakeholders, although they are not immediately affected. They’re also known as an organization’s secondary stakeholders (Nguyen, Skitmore, & Wong, 2009).

The facility’s operational environment is made up of these third parties. Financial data and other publicly available information are used to assess the company’s profitability and performance.

Organizational actions have a direct influence on external stakeholders, even if they are not directly participating in them. They don’t know anything about what’s going on within the organization, so they’re dealing with it from the outside (Manowong, and Ogunlana, 2010). Patients, raw material suppliers, lenders, middlemen, the general public, and the government are all examples of external stakeholders.

The Client: Architectural Services Department, Hong Kong Government and Hospital Authority (HA)

Due to their direct ownership and financial involvement, clients tend to have a greater interest and impact on a project than other stakeholders.

As long as the project is successful and meets expectations, it will have a good influence on its clients. However if it fails, it will have a negative impact on its clients.

These clients played vital role in the beginning stages of the project, making key choices and supplying resources. When he is in the implementation phase, he is demanding intermediate outcomes and making trend-setting decisions for the project. Upon completion of the project, he officially acknowledges it and relieves the project manager from all of his tasks and responsibilities in the process (Von Meding et al., 2013).

Funds for the project were obtained from Hong Kong Government. They are the owners of the idea of setting up the temporary hospital to accommodate more COVID-19 patients.

One of the roles of these clients was to choose the project manager. Choosing the appropriate project manager may make or break a project. Project management is not for everyone.

Personality attributes such as leadership ability, teamwork aptitude, conflict management skills, and the capacity for self-reflection are among the most critical requirements for a project manager.

Another key quality is the ability to handle a project in a systematic and thorough manner. A well-versed and skilled project manager has mastered a wide range of project management approaches and is adept at incorporating them as design components into the project management process.

Due to a shortage of project resources, many initiatives fail. The process of selecting the members of the project team and assigning them to their assigned responsibilities is sensitive, and it takes much skill and care. Line supervisors and key know-how carriers are frequently absent, or the relevance of project work is misunderstood. The outcome is an open dispute between the project and the line, which has a significant impact on the project’s development.

Internal Stakeholders

It is only feasible for the project manager to implement the specifications to their fullest extent if they have the appropriate expertise and resources from the customer.

There are times when a lack of in-house expertise necessitates the acquisition of knowledge from a third-party vendor. Negotiations between the project client and the project manager may be quite challenging, and the importance of the project plays a large role in this.

As the project’s lead contractor, your job is to oversee every aspect of the project’s execution from start to finish. As a result, the contractor bears primary responsibility for the project’s success as well as its failure.

As a direct result of their involvement in the project and the consequences of its success or failure, this group has a significant interest in its outcome.

In terms of project success, the contractor is a positive stakeholder, as they are likely to have a positive influence on its conclusion and the project cannot proceed without them.

Stakeholders have a great deal of interest in and power over the project because of their connection and participation in it, however not as much as the customer does.

HKICC was built using MiC technology. This was a requirement to speed up the construction process. It is the contractor’s job to design and supervise the building construction project from start to finish; they are also responsible for assessing the finished product. It doesn’t matter if the project is big or little; everyone is responsible for it.

Contractors carried out their responsibilities by planning, monitoring, and ensuring that the project adheres to local regulations and codes. Electrical work and HVAC systems, for example, were outsourced to subcontractors by the general contractor.

There are several construction management operations involved in getting the project finished on schedule by the contractor:

Keeping the project on track by ensuring that funding are accessible.

Buying things with enough forethought to ensure they arrive on time.

Buying or renting the necessary building equipment.

Securing the services of subcontractors to carry out certain tasks.

Creating reports on progress to support payments in between.

Contractors are also in charge of hiring and training their own employees, so they must make certain that their workforce is appropriately sized and technically proficient (Assudani, and Kloppenborg, 2010). Contractors are also in charge of handling their own employees’ payrolls as well as that of their subcontractors.

Planned Execution

An effective project management system is essential for completing the task in accordance with the contract’s requirements and timelines. Contractors are also responsible for monitoring development and avoiding disturbance. In order to do this, you’ll need to complete a number of different tasks that has;

Assurance of quality.

Construction approaches that are cost-effective.

Scheduling purchases in advance to ensure a steady supply of resources.

Protection of workers on the job.

The building contractor was responsible for keeping track of the project’s progress and implementing any required alterations. When making judgments, contractors must, of course, keep the project’s scope, timeline, and money in mind (Mok, Shen, and Yang, 2015).

External Stakeholders

When it comes to legal and regulatory duties, contractors have a lot on their plate. Before beginning the project, they must get all the appropriate permissions and licenses, as well as pay any applicable fees and taxes. It’s also important to note that the construction procedure must adhere to local laws and regulations.

It is not an acceptable excuse for contractors to be ignorant of legal requirements in building projects, thus they must keep their knowledge current. The project can proceed as planned if the proper permissions and licenses are in place.

The contractor was responsible for ensuring the health and safety of workers on the construction site by adopting appropriate procedures and educating them. The contractor was also in charge of ensuring that all equipment is working properly and that no mishaps occur as a result of it being misused.

The contractor must notify the client’s supervisory personnel of any unexpected or emergency situations that arise on the job site.

In order to suit the needs of the customer, this stakeholder team developed the project’s construction aspects. Thus, they exert a less impact on the project than those previously listed stakeholder groups.

It’s still important to them since the project’s success or failure has a direct impact on their business, and the converse is true if it fails.

Because of their ability to positively influence project outcomes, project designers are sometimes referred to as positive stakeholders.

When it comes to supervising building projects, architectural project manager is an intermediate or senior-level profession. It is common for them to report to the director of design or the chief architect.

In the role of project managers, architects prepared initial plans, drawings, and designs that meet the client’s demands while adhering to any applicable codes. They also planned the project’s timeline, budget, and documentation. As well as working remotely, they were on-site project managers who keep tabs on budgets, delegate and supervise responsibilities, and keep things moving along according to plan (Wideman, 2004). Upon completion of the project, they generated evaluations and reports.

In the construction project, subcontractors were people who were recruited by the primary contractor to perform tasks that were beyond their area of competence, such as an electrician.

It’s indeed unlikely that this stakeholder group would exert any influence on the project because they are just hired to do the task and the primary contractor would simply find another service provider if they object to their contract (Ragaventh, and Jegan, 2019).

Stakeholder interest in the project is strong among subcontractors since they are directly engaged and its achievement would be seen as a constructive reflection of their work.

Stakeholders are characterized as positive stakeholders because their effort is likely to have a beneficial influence on the project’s outcomes, which would otherwise be impossible to complete without their involvement.

Internal stakeholders are those who are directly affected by the project’s operations, such as those who are employed by the project.

Employees were important project stakeholders since their efforts positively affected the project as a whole.

For those involved in the stakeholder group, success in the project have a direct bearing on their own talents.

Role of Key Stakeholders

Employees have a limited amount of sway, however depending on their position, some may wield more power than others, for example, a project manager may have more sway than other employees.

Suppliers: Construction Innovation and Technology Application Center (CITAC), Logistic Companies and other Suppliers

Positive stakeholders include the construction project’s suppliers since their presence benefits the project and they stand to gain financially from its success, maybe through repeat business.

Due to the fact that suppliers are directly involved in project operations, they constitute another stakeholder.

A project’s success is likely to be of great importance to suppliers, who want to continue doing business with the contractors.

While this group may have a significant impact on a project, it may have a reduced impact on the project if there are other suppliers that may be used in the event that the original provider cannot satisfy the project team’s needs.

There will be less of an impact on a project when there is a lot of competition among suppliers.

The building project has a significant impact on local and state governments, including local councils and state regulators.

Planning authorization and building licenses are typically granted or denied by government agencies, which are external stakeholders. As a result, they have a significant impact.

This indicates that government entities are likely to be positive stakeholders since they have a positive influence on the project’s progress, making them vital to its success (Magazzino, Mele, and Golpîra, 2021).

People who live in the immediate vicinity of a building site are likely to be affected in some way by the project.

The project is of interest to local inhabitants, but they are unlikely to have a significant impact on its outcome.

Conclusion

As the construction project manager, you need to know who your stakeholders are, why you should manage them and how you should manage them.

Identifying and engaging project stakeholders is critical to minimizing the impact of any bad effect they may have on the project.

In order to ensure a project’s success, monitoring stakeholders is essential, and this is becoming even more so due to the rise of social media.

Because of the ease with which information can be shared on social media, negative stakeholders, such as activists, now have the ability to participate at much greater levels because of the increased number of individuals who are aware of and supportive of their cause.

There must be a knowledge of the whole project development process and an active role for the client to play at all times. In order for a project to be successful, the client and project manager must maintain a constant line of communication.

As an external representation of the project’s interests, the client is always present when the project manager’s individual power and expertise are no longer enough.

During the many stages of construction, building contractors play multiple roles, each with its own set of obligations. Contractors must be able to deal with ambiguity and make judgments on a regular basis. There are several factors to consider when hiring a contractor, including their previous work history and their ability to deal with frequent challenges in projects.

References

Assudani, R. and Kloppenborg, T.J., 2010. Managing stakeholders for project management success: an emergent model of stakeholders. Journal of general management, 35(3), pp.67-80.

Doloi, H., 2013. Cost overruns and failure in project management: Understanding the roles of key stakeholders in construction projects. Journal of construction engineering and management, 139(3), pp.267-279.

Magazzino, C., Mele, M. and Golpîra, H., 2021. Project Stakeholder Management. In Application of Mathematics and Optimization in Construction Project Management (pp. 213-226). Springer, Cham.

Manowong, E. and Ogunlana, S., 2010. Strategies and tactics for managing construction stakeholders. Construction stakeholder management, pp.121-137.

Mashali, A., Elbeltagi, E., Motawa, I. and Elshikh, M., 2020. Stakeholder management: an insightful overview of issues.

Mok, K.Y., Shen, G.Q. and Yang, J., 2015. Stakeholder management studies in mega construction projects: A review and future directions. International journal of project management, 33(2), pp.446-457.

Nguyen, H., N., Skitmore, M., & Wong, KJ., 2009. Stakeholder impact analysis of infrastructure project management in developing countries: a study of perception of project management in state-owned engineering firms in Vietnam. Construction Management and Economics, 27(11), pp.1129-1140.

Ragaventh, B. and Jegan, G.S., 2019. Management of Stakeholder in Infrastructure Projects. Management, 6(04).

Von Meding, J., McAllister, K., Oyedele, L. and Kelly, K., 2013. A framework for stakeholder management and corporate culture. Built Environment Project and Asset Management.

Wideman, R.M., 2004. How to motivate all stakeholders to work together. Field guide to project management, p.288.