12/02/2016

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BCA looks to raise productivity of tunnelling projects

Works for tunnelling projects may soon be completed in a shorter span of time and be less noisy as the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) expands a framework presently used to improve productivity in high-rise buildings, reported My Paper.

Under the buildability framework, designers and developers are required to meet a minimum standard of labour-saving methods as well as technology, or face penalties.

They can, for instance, use machines and prefabrication to reduce the excavation on site.

On prefabrication, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said: “There’s a lot of reduction of disamenities for the public because projects are completed faster, less noisily and with much less dust.”

In fact, BCA expects site productivity to increase yearly by over two percent in the next five years, up from the annual growth of about 1.2 percent in the last five years, said Mr Tharman, who also serves as Chairman of the National Productivity Council, during his visit to the construction site of Nanyang Technological University’s three new residential halls.

The new residential halls are being built using the ‘prefabricated prefinished volumetric construction’ (PPVC) method, in which whole rooms, including fittings like fans and lights, are made overseas and fitted out further here before being taken to constructions sites where they are stacked ‘Lego-style’.

This construction method helps developers save up to 25 to 40 percent in labour and 15 to 20 percent in construction time.

Mr Tharman stated that while the method costs about 18 percent more than conventional concrete construction, such costs can be reduced as suppliers come onboard.

“The public sector is taking the lead in building up demand,” he said.

Meanwhile, BCA Chief Executive John Keung expects civil engineering projects to take up a bigger portion of future construction demand in Singapore.

“It’s not a building, so you’ve got to find a different way to encourage them to make it easy to build,” noted Dr Keung.

Picture Source: Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction. Source: UB Australia
Source copied from: http://www.propertyguru.com.sg/property-management-news/2016/1/114458/bca-looks-to-raise-productivity-of-tunnelling-projects

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