Thanks for writing! I’d love to hear more— if you’re interested, my email is cmahome@icloud.com. My family moved back to Aberdeen (Scotland) in 1966, because I had a disabled brother who needed specialized care. Just now, my family and I are visiting HK for the first time since I left as a teensy girl— its an astonishing city. When I look around I see the city through the civil engineering lense and think the early PWD must have done some excellent work!
Hi - I read your comment re the early PWD doing a good job and suddenly I felt so proud of them. We came to HK in 1955 when my Dad, Harold Miller, joined the quantity surveying “department” of the PWD - which at the time consisted of two quantity surveyors (including him) , a clerk and a dog, in a little two room building at the bottom of Battery Path, above Queen’s Rd central. He and his boss were determined to make buildings safe and their brief was to build enough resettlement blocks to fulfil the government’s decision to provide a home for all immigrants fleeing from China within two years of their arrival. This was to keep them safe, to keep the hillsides from squatter huts accidentally set on fire, to house the children etc. also all medication and schooling was free.
You wouldn’t (maybe would!) believe the shortcuts various building firms tried to take and Dad and his team were forever finding buildings where literally everything was illegal. By the time he left in 1974 there were I think around 700 employees in the PWD quantity surveying department. Some of the buildings at the time of Dad’s department, surveying all materials being used as specified by them, are the City Hall and all surrounds, Princess Margaret Hospital- opened by the Duke of Edinburgh and it was a proud moment for me to watch Dad shaking his hand, together with the architect and construction company CEO, and all the other major government buildings of that period too numerous to mention. So thanks for recognising the PWD!
Comments
Thank you for uploading the…
Thank you for uploading the photo. Any chance it has names of the people shown that you can share with us?
Sixth from right seated on…
Sixth from right seated on second row is my dad! James Alexander. Unfortunately I don't recognize others.
PWD 1955
My father Michael Yatskin sitting in second row second from the end
Thanks for writing! I’d love…
Thanks for writing! I’d love to hear more— if you’re interested, my email is cmahome@icloud.com. My family moved back to Aberdeen (Scotland) in 1966, because I had a disabled brother who needed specialized care. Just now, my family and I are visiting HK for the first time since I left as a teensy girl— its an astonishing city. When I look around I see the city through the civil engineering lense and think the early PWD must have done some excellent work!
EARLY PWD
Hi - I read your comment re the early PWD doing a good job and suddenly I felt so proud of them. We came to HK in 1955 when my Dad, Harold Miller, joined the quantity surveying “department” of the PWD - which at the time consisted of two quantity surveyors (including him) , a clerk and a dog, in a little two room building at the bottom of Battery Path, above Queen’s Rd central. He and his boss were determined to make buildings safe and their brief was to build enough resettlement blocks to fulfil the government’s decision to provide a home for all immigrants fleeing from China within two years of their arrival. This was to keep them safe, to keep the hillsides from squatter huts accidentally set on fire, to house the children etc. also all medication and schooling was free.
You wouldn’t (maybe would!) believe the shortcuts various building firms tried to take and Dad and his team were forever finding buildings where literally everything was illegal. By the time he left in 1974 there were I think around 700 employees in the PWD quantity surveying department. Some of the buildings at the time of Dad’s department, surveying all materials being used as specified by them, are the City Hall and all surrounds, Princess Margaret Hospital- opened by the Duke of Edinburgh and it was a proud moment for me to watch Dad shaking his hand, together with the architect and construction company CEO, and all the other major government buildings of that period too numerous to mention. So thanks for recognising the PWD!