published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

In Hong Kong, the responsibility for building management falls on property owners. To assist in building management, most property owners would appoint a property management company. Fulfilling relevant statutory requirements is mandatory for property management companies; however, it is debatable if meeting the basic statutory requirements is equivalent to providing quality property management services for property owners. In fact, property owners usually have more requests than minimum statutory requirements and it is therefore a multi-factor evaluation system for quality of residential property management services is proposed in this research project. To develop the assessment system, quality property management services criteria, including dimensions and performance items, are identified through desk research and focus group interviews with owners’ representatives and property management practitioners. Interval score and ranking are then assigned to the identified assessment criteria by distributing questionnaires with pilot test to owners’ representatives, property management practitioners and building management team of Home Affairs Department of HKSAR. Data collected from the questionnaire are analyzed with weight assessment method: Reliability Interval Method (RIM) in which importance weightings of the criteria can be developed and statistical analysis is allowed. “Repair and Maintenance (excluding clubhouse facilities, if applicable)” and “Effectiveness of emergency repair and maintenance services”, which are not statutory requirements for managing residential properties, are respectively weighted as the most important dimension and performance item. As far as application of the developed quality assessment system is concerned, services quality provided by major property management companies are measured and compared with questionnaires to students pursuing Housing Management in University of Hong Kong. The correlation between quality of property management services and numbers of properties managed by the company is not statistically significant; however, this is likely due to a small samples size, as the visual display of data suggests a relationship. One interesting finding in this research is the high factor weight of assessment criteria which are not statutory requirements for managing residential properties. Such a result implies that meeting basic statutory requirements is not equivalent to providing quality property management services in the eyes of property owners. Besides, this research provides a framework for future development of a classification system to indicate how good a property is for meeting specific overall grading. This research is important because quality of property management services in residential properties can be quantified and closely monitored with the developed quality assessment system in a performance-based, simple and standard way from the perspective of property owners. As far as the benefits of property management companies, which sell services in keen market, are concerned, it is expected that the system could keep supervising and thus improving the quality of services; delivery of high quality services is a profitable way to differentiate ones from the competitors. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

To solve the conflict between limited fiscal funds and increasing demands to strengthen infrastructure construction, Public Private Partnership (PPP) was introduced by the Chinese government as an effective approach to make use of private investment to implement infrastructure projects. To provide services or facilities for public use, in PPP, participants pool their skills and resources while at the same time sharing the risks and rewards. The application of PPP could not only ease the government’s financial pressure, but also improve the efficiency of infrastructure construction and ensure the service quality of projects. Although PPP produces these benefits, the complexity and long-term features of PPP projects expose participants to more risks than in traditional projects. Therefore, risk management of participants is critical to the success of PPP projects. As an innovative procurement approach involves a variety of stakeholders over a long time span, it is necessary to investigate how to appraise and recognize PPP project success. In addition, although risk management has attracted much attention, few studies examine the detailed link between various dimensions of risk management and PPP project success. This research therefore intends to fill these two gaps. Compared with countries in the West, PPP was introduced into China relatively recently. A comparative study was employed in this research in order to understand the Chinese situation and to make use of the experience of other countries to critique PPP project performance in Mainland China. In this study, a two-pronged research program—comprising quantitative and qualitative approaches—was used to test and validate the tripartite theoretical model which was set up based on Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), Resource-based View (RBV) and Relational Exchange Theory (RET). In the quantitative study, questionnaire surveys were conducted concurrently in Mainland China and other places. Hierarchical Multiple Regression was used to explore the relationships posited in the research framework. To provide supportive and complementary evidence to the quantitative data, a case study of a PPP project in Mainland China was undertaken. Open-ended interviews and the thematic analysis technique were adopted in the case study. Taken together, the findings indicated that although the facets of risk management significantly affect project success, there are subtle different influences on different stakeholders’ benefits. For example, the uncertainty of social issues and economic issues will affect public partner’s benefits while the uncertainty of political & institutional issues, economic issues and project specific issues are directly influence private partner’s benefits. To maximize their own interests, different stakeholders should pay more attention to the influencing factors that are specifically associated with them. Meanwhile, it is demonstrated that individual efforts on risk management also contribute to the benefits of other stakeholders as well as to the whole industry development. In addition, the comparative study suggests that public partners of PPP projects in Mainland China could refer to the risk management experience of public partners from other countries to make an appropriate risk management commitment and better manage risks. On the other hand, private partners of PPP projects in Mainland China need to pay more attention to the macro-control of the government so as to protect their rights and interests. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The Minimum Wage Ordinance was introduced since 1 May 2011. It was widely discussed among the society on how it affects the economy and the market nature of Hong Kong. Employer has carried out different measures on either changing the term of employment contract or raise up the requirement for the employee as to compensate the addition salary cost they have paid under this regulation. Being a participant in building management service, we observe that owners/ residents rise up their expectation on the performance of building attendant. They believe the increase of salary under MWO would motivate the building attendant on their work and it would also attract more candidates with higher qualification and personal ability to join the service sector. However, there is a variation between the expectation and the reality. This research is attempted to identify whether the implementation of MWO would improve the performance of building attendant and what are the factors of giving such impact by studying the change of labour market of building management and the result of customer satisfaction survey conduct in this research. From these findings, we would try to verify if there is any direct relationship between MWO and building staff performance and recommend some appropriate strategy to owners/resident on how to improve the performance of building attendant. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

The property management in Hong Kong has emerged in its importance in the past decades. The people’s thought towards property management has changed from the provision of basic services such as watchmen and cleaners to a professional servicing industry. Moreover, as changes in people’s attitude in service consumption and social values, the requirement of the owners for the property management services raised. Apart from this, the participation of Owner Committee ( OC ) in the property management has become more significant which has been recognized by the residents, the property management practitioners as well as the government. As a result of the rapid population growth, the demand for the housing has increased rapidly too thus, led to the development of multi-storey buildings in large scale. The government policy has encouraged the participation of OC in the management of the building by formation of Owners Incorporations aiming at the promotion of a ‘self-help’ approach for which the OC could manage the building on their own. The encouragement of the government by enactment of the Building Management Ordinance has strengthened the power of the Incorporated Owners as they have the power to terminate and to appoint managers at their choice. However, we always hear that Owner Committee (OC) will cause a lot of quarrels between OC and the property managers/property management companies and bring a lot of troubles to the property manager/property management company. Sometimes the property managers/ property management companies complained that the requirement of the OC is too high to meet and unreasonable. Moreover, they also complained that OC controls too much on them so that their efficiency of work and their daily performance will be reduced. In addition, it creates a great impact to the property management companies and to the industry of property management. For example, the incidents of termination of property managers/property management companies were increased for the past decade. Does OC really could not perform their function and to make contribution to improve the quality of private residential property in Hong Kong? In this dissertation, it is to find out whether the OC participation in the management of the property has positive impacts on the management quality of the estates or not. If yes, to what extent or level that OC could help improve the quality of the private residential property in Hong Kong. After the estate study, it was found that OC participation in the management of the property could help the management company understand their needs and become more accountable. It was also noted that by the questionnaire survey and face to face interviews, the estate selected for the estate study that is a high level of participation of OC, all the comments and results have a higher satisfaction rate and a positive impacts on the management quality of the estate as well as in the whole property management industry. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management