Building safely by design

Incubating ideas to drive innovation

Leighton Asia’s HKZMB Passenger Clearance Building (PCB) project team has won the prestigious Lighthouse Club International Design for Safety Award for their excellence in mitigating significant health and safety risks through an innovative roof erection method for the project.

The team modularised the roof structure of the PCB into modules of up to 60 x 25m in size and weighing up to 690 tonnes. The modules were then prefabricated and assembled off site before being transported and erected at site by using strand jacking and launching methods.

Project challenge

The project involved the construction of an architectural steel roof for a 40,000 square metres, 30 metres high building.

The limitations for the team included a tight construction programme and height restrictions due to its proximity to the Hong Kong International Airport.

Key initiatives to eliminate and mitigate health and safety risks:

Lifting operations/work at height

• Simplify on-site processes involved with assembly, erection and on-site connections
• 85% of the cladding, features and services were installed off-site in controlled factory conditions
• Integrated safe accesses for retractable transport frames and recyclable lift and launch structures
• Simplify the process and shortened the programme by adopting vertical jacking and horizontal launching method

Risk management

• Consideration was given to all-weather events and temporary storage on site
• BIM was used for checking interfaces to avoid changes on site
• Preparation of a prescriptive monitoring regime, and design of a load test and functional test procedure Preparation of a detailed operation manual withhold points, including Engineering sign-off