Quality Assurance for Outsourcing of Estate Management and Maintenance Services - The Context of Hong Kong Housing Department

摘要

The practice of outsourcing of different works and services has become a popular trend in Hong Kong. The Housing Department (HD) of Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) is not exception. HD began her outsourcing services in Estate Management and Maintenance Services (EMMS) for her public rental housing (PRH) flats to private property service agents (PSAs) in 1999. Since then, there have been numerous complaints for the inferior quality of EMMS provided by PSAs. To improve the quality of EMMS of PSAs for responsibility and accountability to PRH tenants, this paper has focused on the major principles with reference to ISO 9000 standards to which PSAs are able to fulfill in order to achieve the quality assurance towards EMMS for PRH tenants in Hong Kong. The main focus of this study with reference to ISO 9001: 2008 embraces the ’Customer Focus’;‘Leadership’; ‘Involvement of People’;‘Process Approach’; ‘System Approach to Management’;‘Continual Improvement’; ‘Factual Approach to Decision Making’;and ‘Mutually Beneficial Supplier Relationships’. This paper also touches with the new approach of ISO: 2008 on outsourcing requirements on which PSAs as well as HD has to address in order to achieve good quality, timely cost-effective, sustainable and responsive EMMS to PRtt tenants of HA.