In 2000, Cheng Wai-tat failed to secure a job in the UK where he graduated with a degree in civil engineering. He returned to Hong Kong to look for opportunities, and decided to stay in the S.A.R. to develop his career although the local constructio...

Blasting jobs are carried out with dynamite and can be conducted either above or below the ground. Members of blasting teams belong to a seldom-heard-of profession who incur substantial risks in their line of work.

Blasting teams comprise blastin...

Members of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong have a significant role to play in the local construction industry.

Deo Raj Tamang was locally born, but returned to Nepal in the early years of his childhood. In 1995, he came back to his place of birth, wh...

The stories of three female workers in the construction industry, all of whom entertain the hope of forging a future in their own lines of work.

Choy Ming-yan is an engineer who graduated six years ago from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University with...

Provisions of applicable legislation stipulate that any contractor operating a construction site with one hundred or more workers should employ a registered safety officer to remind workers of the importance of industrial safety measures.

As a vete...

Among the various types of work in the construction industry, formwork trails bar fixing as the field that suffers the most acute shortage in manpower. Sin Kam-shing has been in the trade for over three decades, and can testify to the vicissitudes o...

Bar bending is the most strenuous line of work in the construction industry.

During their first lesson, bar bender foreman Chan Si-yin briefed new apprentices on the unique chara...

In the 1990s, a booming property market and the launch of mega infrastructural projects in Hong Kong created an insatiable demand for construction workers. Back then a newcomer to the bamboo scaffold construction industry, Wan Yung-man was driven by...

Tower cranes are examples of heavy machinery of all kinds that are indispensible to large scale projects. They tower over skyscrapers at construction sites, and with their long arms rotating in different directions in mid-air are awe-inspiring spect...

Seventy-five-year-old Wong Ip-Keung first started working at construction sites as a carpenter apprentice. After squatter huts at Shek Kip Mei were ravaged by fire in 1953, he took the opportunity offered by projects to redevelop the area and joined...