Champion Award for the Lighthouse Club for T Park Project

Safety drives much of what CRAFT does. So much so that the company has just claimed one of Hong Kong’s most important safety awards at the Construction Safety Awards held as part of the Lighthouse Club’s Annual Contractor’s Dinner in September.

The Champion Award for The Lighthouse Club, Hong Kong Occupational Safety and Health Association Safe Subcontractor Award recognises excellent safety performance in a vital part of the industry, often in the most hazardous activities. That CRAFT beat scaffolding companies and the builders of foundations to the top award, says a lot about the company’s safety record.

“It’s fantastic to win the top safety award. It’s a real credit to our safety team who have helped grow our systems safely on site,” Grant Craft says.

“We have our own safety and environmental policies and the like because we really care about creating a safe working environment. There’s weekly safety meetings on all sites, daily site safety meetings with supervisors and subcontractors alike, all the various people and across each part of the job site. And that has eventually built up a safety culture.”

CRAFT’s unitised roofing system was rightly in the spotlight at the awards. The lateral thinking behind the system turns conventional roofing methods on their head. Instead of having dozens of contractors working at extreme heights and often on potentially dangerous angles, carrying materials, strapped into safety harnesses, CRAFT has the bulk of its workforce building a roof on the ground.

“The guys building our roofs are working pre-engineered jigs, just 300 millimetres off the ground, instead of 36 metres above ground level. Building at ground level means entire sections of roof can be installed with a tower or mobile crane in a matter of minutes, rather than hours and days in a traditional roofing project.”

CRAFT received the award for its work on the Hong Kong government’s Sludge Treatment Facility (also known as the T Park)  in the north western NewTerritories, a joint venture project involving Veolia Water, Leighton and John Holland JV.

“Instead of 100 workers up on the roof, 36 metres in the air, we have them on the ground. It’s much safer and there’s far less room for error.

On the sludge treatment plant, the gull-wing-shaped roof was comprised of hundreds of angular, rectangular unitised roofing sections, each a few metres wide. CRAFT builds safety handrails into the sections’ open edges before they are craned into place. The  following prefabricated piece is lifted into position and the seam zipped, ensuring the dangerous open edge is always secured.