CHEVALIER INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LIMITED
The Chevalier Group was founded by its helmsman, Dr Chow Yei Ching in 1970. The Lift and Escalator Division (LED) was the Group's first major department and today its services remain as the core business of Chevalier. At present, LED employs over 1,300 staff from China and Hong Kong. Since its establishment, thousands of lifts and escalators have been supplied to a variety of commercial, industrial and residential developments. Last year, 220 sets of lifts and escalators were installed. LED has transcended its business and services from Hong Kong to China, Macau, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc. Also, LED has secured a number of projects in the above regions, symbolizing its globalization, ensuring its product and service meet with the industry's internationally recognised standards and demonstrating the expertise and capability of LED.
Provision of good quality service to customers has long been regarded as LED's pledge towards customers. In order to fulfil the customers' needs, the Division provides a comprehensive scope of services including design, installation and maintenance that give full confidence to Chevalier customers. Furthermore, LED profoundly understands the importance of delivering fast, stable and reliable lift and escalator maintenance services. Currently, 22 maintenance depots of LED are scattered over Hong Kong. Well-trained maintenance staff is stationed in depots so as to provide
24-hour maintenance services for over 7,000 lifts and escalators in Hong Kong, quickly responding to customers' needs. LED further installs Remote Elevator Monitoring and Alarming System, which indicates the lift-in-service status and operation, in around 10 industrial and residential buildings. Once lift breakdown or stoppage occurs, the System will automatically transmit signals to the management office and the emergency call centre. The technician can then immediately respond to the fault and the down time will be greatly reduced.
According to Dr Chow Yei Ching, Chairman and Managing Director of the Chevalier Group, lift and escalator business differs from others since it provides a long lasting service to customers. Unless for the demolition of a building, the life cycle of a lift or escalator will usually be 30 years or above after its installation. Due to the high traveling frequencies of lifts, inconvenience or even danger will be caused on customers if accident occurs. In view of this, products should not only comply with stringent safety standards, but they should also undergo proper maintenance service or repair when necessary. Apart from sustaining the standard of lifts or escalators, assurance on the maintenance of staff's professional skills are another art to master, and which LED endeavours to fulfill. The Division has co-operated with the City University of Hong Kong for organising lift and escalator technical training courses in the well-equipped Chevalier Engineering Service Centre which provides on-the-job training courses to staff so as to strengthen their technical and safety knowledge for handling daily testing and maintenance works. LED was further awarded the Certificate of Recognition from the Vocational Training Centre in 1996 for its contribution in training talents for Hong Kong.
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Throughout the years, LED's professional qualifications and outstanding results have been recognized and accredited on the Approved List of Lifts and Escalators of many government bodies, such as the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department and Hong Kong Housing Authority. In addition, LED is the member of the Lift and Escalator Contractors Association (LECA) in which all ten members represent the largest lift and escalator companies in Hong Kong. LED's membership of LECA therefore helps it gain wider exposure in the business, such as new technology, safety issues, and the implementation of new laws and regulations by the government, further sharpening the expertise of LED.
With the belief 'Prevention is Better than Cure', LED holds regular meetings with Owner's Committees so as to listen and to be responsive to the needs and requirements of the customers, and to take corrective actions if needed. Dr Chow recalled, "we have been fully aware of the importance of quality management since we set up LED. However, due to the insufficiency of human resources, it was not an easy task to implement quality improvement strategies at that time. Afterwards, when our Group's diversified businesses and operations have grown and expanded, more resources can then be invested in recruiting talented staff. In addition, we have learned from other enterprises' experience and in recent years, we have decided to implement our own quality management system. Finally, our commitment towards quality excellence and customer satisfaction contributes to the accreditation of ISO 9001 certification in 1994. Our affiliated office in Singapore was also accredited with ISO 9001 in 1998 for its quality performance in the design, installation and maintenance services."
Dr Chow also pointed out the equal importance of maintaining top performance in business result, service quality and staff satisfaction. These three areas are closely knitted together as a cycle. Chevalier starts this cycle by providing on-the-job training for the staff so that their skills and knowledge can be enhanced. Various activities are regularly held in order to strengthen communication among staff and to boost their working morale. Following the above strategies, higher level of the staff's job satisfaction will be resulted, leading to better service quality, higher customer satisfaction and increasing growth in business result.
The Chevalier Group has also given its support to many charitable events such as sponsoring the Community Chest in charity walks and the Lifeline Express in serving cataract patients in China, providing educational facilities, granting scholarships and supporting educational bodies of all kinds. In 1998, the Group has also established "Chevalier Culture & Education Foundation" which fosters cultural, academic, artistic exchanges between the Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau through organizing a wide variety of social, cultural and artistic events.
On the significance of participating in HKMA Quality Award this year, Dr Chow remarked, "By submitting a detailed report during the judging process, we can take this opportunity to thoroughly evaluate our own quality management system. Valuable comments from the Board of Examiners help and guide us how to further improve our system." Talking about the Chevalier Group's future development of quality management, Dr Chow finally noted that they will be in full gear to improve its computer system, deploy information technology for faster provision of quality
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