Hong Kong, May 17, 2023 - The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) recently shared that as of February the statutory body has approved over 3,100 applications under the Smart Tender Building Rehabilitation Facilitating Services scheme, benefiting over 220,000 households with the Smart Tender e-platform playing a valuable role. (Source: blog article of the URA on March 12, 2023)

The URA is committed to facilitating building rehabilitation and encouraging building maintenance by offering subsidies and technical support to owners concerned. Introduced in May 2016, the Smart Tender scheme e-platform has served as the pivotal channel for the URA to guide residential property owners of all types through complex tendering procedures, streamlined into three service stages: Consultancy Sourcing & Tender Preparation, Tendering & Proposal Collection, and Assessment & Awarding. The 3,100 applications approved for renewal works ranged from single buildings with dozens of units to large housing estates of over 3,000 flats. Most of those in-progress cases have reached the second stage, while 80% of those initiated before the launch of Operation Building Bright 2.0 have completed all the three stages within 24 months. The scheme has been widely well-received by owners and owners’ corporations.

In addition to making Smart Tender platform enhancements, such as dedicated doc management, the URA has included project consultancy and fire service installation (FSI) to its tendering services. In response to the phenomenon of progress stagnation due to misunderstanding or misalignment between the individual owners and the owners’ corporation, the URA has recently enhanced the Owners’ Portal on the Smart Tender platform to allow owners to easily log in and check relevant documents. Further service enhancements include e-form functions for fast quotation creation by service providers, tender opening with QR code verification, etc. The continuous improvement of the scheme and the tendering platform is expected to help numerous property owners and owners’ corporations accelerate completion of much needed rehabilitation work on their buildings.

A long-term e-tendering partner of the URA, C&T’s ProSmart team is committed to working closely with the statutory body to continuously enhance the Smart Tender platform. Prioritizing openness, transparency and usability, the team will support the URA in upholding its public mission through fulfilling the evolving needs of different stakeholders, from property owners to service providers and the mass public.

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