Training on Standard Form of Building Contract The Standard Form of Building Contract 2005 (SFBC) has been published for over five years. There are voices suggesting that the old form should be stopped printing. The SFBC has adopted the updated practice and has enhanced the provisions in the old form such as risk sharing between both parties of the contract. The stakeholders are therefore encouraged to use this SFBC instead of the old form. To equip our members and other stakeholders with better knowledge of this SFBC, our division has organized a training course on this SFBC. The instructor of this training course is Mr Bernard Wu. He is a well-experienced trainer on this SFBC. He is also a quantity surveyor and a practicing barrister. You may refer to the HKIS web site for the details of the training course or the Surveyors Times Vol. 19 dated August 2010. To make the training more effective, the number of participants in each training class is limited and the enrolment will be on a ‘first come first serve’ basis. You should not miss this precious opportunity. Publications Our division together with the Association of Consultant Quantity Surveyors (ACQS) will produce two publications for quantity surveying services, viz. the Guidance Notes and the QS Services Fee Scales. Two committees have recently been set up with members working in consultant firms, contractors, developers etc. The primary objective of the Guidance Notes Drafting Committee is to review the existing quantity surveying practices in both private and public sectors and to establish guidelines to help enhance consistency and standard of quantity surveying services within the industry. The guidelines will cover the quantity surveying services provided by quantity surveyors working in consultant firms and contractors. The QS Services Fee Scale Review Committee is to review the existing booklet on fee scales and to produce a new one to suit the current situation. The intention of the new fee scales is to give an indication to the stakeholders on the reasonable ranges of fees that are expected for quality professional services. Hopefully, this will reduce the number of unreasonable low bids, which have significant impacts on the quantity surveying profession. China Engineering Cost Association (中國建設工程造價管理協會) (CECA) 20th Congress This year is the 20th anniversary of the CECA. To celebrate this remarkable milestone, the CECA invited representatives from several quantity surveying institutes outside Mainland viz. ICEC, PAQS, RICS, SISV and HKIS to join its congress held on 16 September in Beijing. The HKIS representatives included Prof K W Chau, the President, Mr. TT Cheung, the past President, and I, the QSD Chairman. The Congress had about 300 attendants. It started with speeches from the China government officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and followed with the congratulatory speeches from the representatives of the institutes outside Mainland. The speech of the President of the CECA, madam Zhang Yun Kuan (張允寬理事長), highlighted the platform they established with various international quantity surveying institutes in the past years. Through the platform, cost engineers in the Mainland could get themselves familiar with the cost engineering practices of other countries and vice versa. She also expressed their sincere thanks to the HKIS for the assistance and support in the past years for co-ordinating between the international institutes and the CECA. After the speeches, there were various awards presented to the members of the CECA. One of the awards was to show appreciation to the council members who have served the council for at least three terms i.e. 12 years and made significant contributions in education, consultations, cost engineering services etc. These council members included two HKIS members. They were Mr T T Cheung and Mr Tommy Y K Yim. Congratulations to TT and Tommy for receiving the honours for the hardwork they have done for the cost engineering profession in China. Subsequently, there was a presentation of 13 papers relating to cost engineering. This included the paper presented by Mr T T Cheung on behalf of the HKIS on the topic of “建設工程的風險評估、防範及管理”. The Congress then successfully ended with a nice dinner together with the cultural shows including singing and roller dancing. The shows impressed me very much not solely due to their professional standards but because of some performers being CECA members. They were absolutely multi-talented cost engineers!