Paul Y–ITC Construction, in JV with Italian company Seli, has reached a major milestone on Hong Kong’s troubled Strategic Sewage Disposal Scheme (SSDS) after holing through on one of its two tunnel drives.
The 5.3km tunnel between Kwun Tong and Tseung Kwan O is the first of the six TBM driven tunnels on the 25km sewer collection network to be completed.
Paul Y/Seli is still experiencing problems on its other tunnel, a 4.8km connection from Chai Wan on Hong Kong Island and Kwun Tong on the other side of the harbour in Kowloon.
Gammon Construction/Kvaerner is also making slow progress on its two tunnels across the Kowloon Peninsula. Tunnelling on one drive has completely stopped after the TBM’s drive shaft broke in June. In the west, Skanska has stopped its TBM while it completes a 1000m long probe close to a major fault near the sensitive Kwai Chung container port complex.
Despite these difficulties, Paul Y/Seli’s achievement, using a refurbished Robbins TBM, is seen as critically important to the whole project. The embattled client, the Drainage Services Department (DSD), made the most of the event, inviting local lawmakers and media to watch the holethrough via a live television feed on November 9.
The breakthrough comes as the DSD faces fresh pressure from legislators over delays to the project, which is currently running more than four years behind schedule. Work should have been completed in May 1997, but the latest government estimate has put this back to ‘sometime well into 2001’. This is at least the fourth time the completion date has been revised, prompting several tunnelling sources to believe even the latest forecast is optimistic.
The government is also facing a difficult arbitration in London with the original contractor, Campenon Bernard/Maeda, which was thrown off site in December 1996 after it claimed it was too dangerous and ‘impossible’ to continue under the existing contract conditions. At the end of October, legislators called for the entire scheme to be stopped while a thorough review of progress was carried out.
Hong Kong chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, has already promised to review phases 2, 3 and 4 using an independent group of experts from Denmark, the US and China to look at the current problems. They will also seek alternative strategies to treat local sewage. But the group has the same members that backed the government plans about three years ago.
This prompted one legislator, Selina Chow Liang Shuk-Yee of the pro-business Liberal Party, to comment: "If we need a review, let’s have a review, but at least we should have a clean slate." In response, director of the DSD, John Collier, said that some of the problems had been caused by contractors and equipment failure. However, Ms Chow retorted: "You cannot dish out all the responsibility to other parties and say the government has nothing to do with it."
