We are pleased to announce the completion of walkway covers outside Children’s Hospital at Kai Tak, that were very well received by the public. The biggest challenges in constructing a walkway cover in the busy footpath is finding underground space for accommodating its foundation. The proposed Walkway Cover at Hong Kong Children Hospital faced severe constraints as the footpath was once a main route to Kai Tak Development, thus, extensive, massive, dense and complexity utilities are all housed in the footpath, for supporting its future social and economic development. Conceivably, the diversions of such services are intricate and complex. Any long periods of utilities diversions would be infeasible for delivery of service within a very tight timeframe and commitment to the client. Facing such adversities and dilemma, the Resident Site Staff came up with a plan to assist the Contractor to devise a 40m long and 4m deep hand-dug tunneling method and modified footings tailored-made to suit the site conditions.
Also, to minimize possible settlement near the seafront during the deep excavation, cement grouting behind the sheetpiles was adopted; when encountering the unexpected numerous large boulders in the deep trench, the team erected a manual chain hoist inside the tunnel for lifting the heavy boulders onto the wheelbarrow for hauling away. With such enhancement methods, there was not one single utility diversion was entailed, saving tremendous potential time required for complex utility diversions. Despite working inside the narrow and deep trench with linear site access, limited working space and the presence of massive underground utilities overhead, with concerted effort, determination and persistence for success, the construction of the Walkway Cover was accomplished earlier than programmed and received many compliments.

