A study of the effectiveness of building management ordinance on building maintenance in Hong Kong's private residential buildings

Abstract

With the growing population in Hong Kong, there are various types of residential buildings to meet the demands of different households. Among the varieties of housing, more than half of the domestic households were living in private residential buildings by 2023. These private residential buildings were mostly managed by the Property Management Corporations (“PMCs”) and had set up the Owners’ Corporations (“OCs”) under the Building Management Ordinance (Chapter 344) (“BMO”). However, an increasing number of building accidents, e.g. concrete spalling, happened at the common parts of buildings recently. The accidents were mostly caused by a lack of maintenance of buildings and the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (“HKIE”) projected that many buildings over 30 years would be at high risk by the year 2046 due to their poor and dilapidated condition. The BMO has empowered private residential building owners and relevant stakeholders with the responsibility to keep their buildings safe, particularly the common parts. With the ongoing problems in the maintenance of common parts in private residential buildings, a study of the effectiveness of BMO on building maintenance in Hong Kong’s private residential buildings was conducted in this paper. Through data collected from interviewing practitioners in the industry and surveys from owners, the effectiveness of the BMO on building maintenance was evaluated with recommendations.