iLab had the great pleasure of receiving the visit by a group of important officials from the Government Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD) on 26 January 2024. Led by Mr Harry Ma, Deputy Director of Civil Engineering and Development and Dr Julian Kwan, Assistant Director (Technical), the delegates included more than 10 Heads and Deputy Heads of its Civil Engineering Office, Geotechnical Engineering Office, the Sustainable Lantau Office, East, South, and North Development Offices.
Joined from iLab@HKU were Chair Professor Wilson Lu (Digital Construction), Professor Frank Xue, Dr Junjie Chen, Ar. Prof. Ada Fung (HKU Faculty of Architecture Honorable Fellow and iLab Fellow), Dr Louis Chu (Deputy Director of Estate Office), and more than 20 PhD students. iLab members introduced innovative technologies including
· BIM and blockchain-enabled MiC Three Treasure (三寶),
· i-Core-enabled large-scale precast civil works cross-border logistics safety monitoring and Just-in-Time (JIT) planning,
· big data-enabled AI inspector for gauging construction waste off-site sorting, and
· computer vision-enabled robotics for safe waste sorting.
It is found that many of iLab’s innovative technologies have been implemented in real-life construction projects in Hong Kong, including CEDD’s Boardwalk Underneath Island Eastern Corridor and the Construction Waste Off-site Sorting Facilities in TKO and Tuen Mun. The visit was to find out whether some of the technologies, with further calibration or development, can be implemented in the whole line of CEDD’s important projects.
Mr. Ma concluded that the visit was just the start of the beginning for CEDD to seek innovations and technologies for high-quality development in civil engineering and development.
