Aggressive Construction has a truly dreadful safety and quality record, with six workers killed in four deadly incidents in the last 3.5 years: so why is the government still hiring them

Cowboy construction firm Aggressive Construction has been blamed for six worker deaths in the last 42 months, the latest tragedy happening yesterday at a government worksite near West Kowloon.

A 56-year-old electrician laying cables for a relocated fire station project fell around four metres to his death, leading to many questions over the government’s apparent on-going tolerance and support for this delinquent construction firm.

The story of Aggressive should have ended in September 2022, when a Sau Mau Ping crane collapse killed three workers and injured six more. That tragedy came after another worker was electrocuted and killed at a site in Kowloon Bay in July 2020 and a few months before a worker would be killed by a falling steel I-beam at a site on Tung Yuen Street[1] in December 2022.

The company was also behind the defective concrete at the new HKU staff quarters on High West and was fined $17,000 for illegal water discharge into Victoria Harbour (again, from bandit zone Tung Yuen Street) in 2021.

In response to the crane collapse of September 2022, Labour and Buildings Departments made their usual copy-paste lies of how “the Government attaches great importance to the safety and quality of building works.”

Development Bureau took a slightly sterner line and said it was banning Aggressive from tendering for any more government contracts for 15 months, until the end of 2023.

But this didn’t affect any of its existing contracts, including the lucrative main contractor job with Architectural Services Department[2] at the West Kowloon site of yesterday’s tragic death.

And, given the length and scale of public works contracts in Hong Kong, a 15 month ban on tendering is hardly a punishment anyway.

Aggressive seeks “courageous” workers

Aggressive, whose parent Great Harvest advertises that “cost-efficiency makes all the difference” and calls for “courageous” workers, will be back at the public sector trough in no time. Great Harvest boss Cheung Woon-yin has extensive contacts within government, claiming to have worked on Housing Authority and Architectural Services public sector projects for 45 years.

Cost-efficiency is Aggressive’s main selling point

Development Secretary Bernadette Linn is notoriously soft on safety – to my questions at Construction Safety Week last year on Hong Kong’s breakneck[3] construction speed, she said innovation such as modular construction was the answer, not a more sustainable building pace.

But surely even a good friend to the construction sector such as Linn can see the value of whipping firms into line before the construction boom really takes off with the Northern Metropolis and the Lantau artificial islands?

Make the tendering ban painful and meaningful – 10 years, or 15 years – giving the firm only the dogends of the concrete gravy ahead. Such a punishment is more in keeping with the scale of these projects and to the government’s stated commitment to safe work places.

If we remain with business as usual, the government’s petty penny pinching and “look the other way” approach will be killing many more workers in the boom to come.

**UPDATE** At 9:37pm today (11 October), Development Bureau issued a press release[4] stating it will, as a result of this tragedy, ban Aggressive from public tendering for a further year on top of its existing ban. It also says it may consider extending that ban further or even taking the company off the public tender lists altogether. Mind you, DevB says exactly that every time this happens (word for word), and those threats never materialise. Aggressive is still the main contractor for a HUGE Kai Tak site, putting up public housing in one of the shoddiest construction sites I have ever seen in the city.

[1] The Yau Tong “lawless zone” I have written about so often people still send me pictures of China Concrete trucks when they see them doing stupid things

[2] The project in Jordan is an “urban beautification” project which involves relocating the classic fire station (seen as an eyesore by opera goers) away from the Xiqu Centre to make room for a new hotel, office and residential building. The fire station is being moved and enhanced at To Wah Road, behind the CLP Centenary Building 1.4km away.

[3] Literally: Hong Kong is the most dangerous place in the developed world to be a construction worker. It’s also the easiest place in the world to get a construction permit…

[4] Starting with the line that the “Government attached [sic] great importance to construction safety”. I hate to mock people for a typo (remove thine own log etc) but when it seems to sum up their “given up” attitude so well…. HA HA!