Hong Kong is emerging from one of its most severe public health crises in living memory. Everyday life in the city was suspended as COVID-19 infections soared with overflowing hospital wards and scenes of panic buying at supermarkets and pharmacies.

It was a crisis that tested the Hong Kong community to its limits, but one which demonstrated its resilience, ingenuity, and resourcefulness as people banded together to bring the fifth wave of the pandemic under control.

While the government mobilised the community in an unprecedented city-wide effort to contain the outbreak, CLP drew on its expertise and technological excellence to help support Hong Kong's fight through the darkest days of the pandemic.

The company has also teamed up with various community partners and non-governmental organisations to distribute daily necessities, free meal coupons, anti-epidemic supplies and other food items to low-income families, the elderly, and other people in need. 

An electrifying battleground

Temporary hospitals and community isolation facilities were essential to halt the spread of infection in Hong Kong, and they had to be built and connected to power supplies as quickly as possible.

Senior Construction Manager Mike Ng and Engineer II Wilson Li from CLP’s Power System Business Group joined a special taskforce to mastermind the electrification of the new facilities.

Ng oversaw managing multiple network projects under construction in the North Region, racing against time to provide electricity to the vital community treatment and isolation centres.

At one stage, they had to take the cables along a narrow pedestrian road crossing. The team worked closely with relevant government departments and came up with a creative solution by building a temporary bridge to carry the cables across the road without delaying the connection work.

Li, a young engineer joining CLP for only a few years, was responsible for providing a power network to the isolation facility newly built near Kai Tak cruise terminal.

It was an urgent, large-scale engineering challenge, and Li says he was hugely impressed by the team spirit and determination shown by his colleagues, contractors, and government departments as they worked together to achieve the feat.

Digital solutions to keep people safe

As well as deploying its resources and expertise to meet the power demands of the pandemic battle, CLP also drew on its ingenuity to help shield some of Hong Kong’s most vulnerable people from the impact of COVID-19.

Acting Deputy Director – Customer Operations Alex Man used his engineering, process automation, and customer experience expertise to create an innovative digital solutions management system for the Hong Kong Community Anti-Coronavirus Link (HKCACL).

The management system allowed HKCACL to better coordinate its much-needed volunteer services as well as the anti-epidemic supplies and daily essentials it provides to people in need across the city.

Chief Corporate Development Officer Quince Chong applauded Man’s project team for using innovation and digital technology to design the smart digital system. "I'm proud to see how CLP colleagues amplify CLP’s core value of caring for people with digital skills they learned at work to help the community," she says.

Man says his team worked with two volunteers to examine the HKCACL’s internal operations, and applied design thinking skills to address the issues it faced in managing its inventories and a team of more than 5,000 volunteers.

It took them just a fortnight to complete the design, testing, and launch of the system.

The one-stop system helps HKCACL with stock keeping, volunteer registration, matching of supplies and volunteer services, and the recording of volunteer service hours. It also helps the HKCACL call centre respond to people in need instantly.

“We are so happy that the system supports a meaningful cause and helps the HKCACL streamline and allocate its resources more effectively. Our efforts involved many sleepless nights, but they have definitely paid off,” Man remarks with a smile.

The fifth wave of COVID-19 has severely tested Hong Kong, but it has also demonstrated the resilience, ingenuity, and resourcefulness of its people in fighting the pandemic. CLP is proud to be in the frontline of that continuing battle.