Mr Tan Kian Hoon, President SCAL;

Members of SCAL;

Ladies and Gentlemen:

My wife and I are happy to join you for your annual dinner.

As you are aware, the performance of the construction industry in Singapore has been less than satisfactory in recent years, in terms of raising productivity and in efforts at upgrading itself. This evening, I would like to address the need for the industry to improve its construction quality. This move must be given high priority if we are to achieve a productive and progressive construction industry, one that consistently delivers quality buildings at competitive prices in the new millennium.

The Building and Construction Authority or BCA has been using the construction quality assessment system, or CONQUAS 21, to measure the quality of nearly 1,500 buildings over the past 10 years. While the national average CONQUAS score has increased from 66.2 in 1988 to 75.8 last year signifying an improvement in building quality, developers have been receiving more complaints from property buyers about defects and poor workmanship in newly built properties. This is not surprising. As Singaporeans become more sophisticated and knowledgeable, they expect better building quality and service. The industry, especially the developers, designers and contractors, cannot afford to ignore this rising expectation.

One way for the industry to improve construction quality is to substantially raise the skills level of its construction workforce.

As we push for higher buildability and adopt more labour-saving construction technologies, the demand for workers will reduce. This change will be steered by the implementation of the legislation on buildable designs. Even so, we have to accept that foreign workers will remain a dominant part of this smaller workforce. Therefore, the skills of these workers must be greatly improved and there must be sufficient number of suitably skilled workers to meet the changing needs of the industry.

The proportion of skilled workers in our foreign construction workforce has risen significantly from 6% in 1995 to 23% in 1998. However, we still have to catch up with countries like Australia, the United States and Japan where the proportion of skilled construction workers ranges from 40%-70%.

We will therefore be raising our Basic Skills Certificate or BSC requirement. The BSC was introduced in August last year to ensure that foreign construction workers from non-traditional sources or NTS go through a basic screening process. The tests available for BSC certification now comprise various trades under building, civil engineering and mechanical & electrical engineering. Since April this year, BCA has enhanced the syllabus by incorporating basic English and arithmetic tests. This will further minimise the risk of hiring of farmers, fishermen and other unsuitable workers who lack even the most rudimentary construction skills.

Initially, at least 20% of the NTS workers approved for each application were required to possess the BSC. This was raised to 50% in April this year. To speed up the transformation of the construction sector into a more professional and productive industry, we will need more skilled foreign workers and at the same time, reduce our dependency on unskilled ones. I would like to announce that with effect from 1 April next year, the Ministry of Manpower will require 100% of foreign construction workers recruited to have at least a Basic Skills Certificate. To facilitate the implementation, BCA will assist the industry to schedule more trade tests overseas.

The construction industry can also raise its quality and productivity through quality standards, practices and benchmarks.

BCA has been promoting the use of the construction quality assessment system or CONQUAS 21 as the national yardstick for measuring the construction quality of building projects. It has also continuously fine-tuned this assessment system to keep pace with changes in technology and customer demand for higher quality.

Besides setting standards and measuring the level of workmanship through CONQUAS 21, BCA will now take a more proactive approach to help the industry climb the quality ladder. It has embarked on a CONQUAS 21 Enhancement Programme. This programme comprises an education course for professionals and contractors to cultivate awareness of quality standards set out in CONQUAS 21, and shows them how quality assessments are carried out. This education course was introduced last year.

To complement this, a series of CONQUAS 21 Good Practice Guides is currently being developed. Over the years, BCA ‘s quality assessors have gathered a vast amount of information on common building defects and frequent mistakes made by contractors under the CONQUAS 21 system. They are also familiar with the good practices of certain contractors and practitioners who consistently deliver high quality work. The CONQUAS 21 Good Practices Guides will share the model methods of these better performers as well as BCA’s experiences with the rest of the industry. The use of these guides will be widely promoted. Over the next year, BCA will release six such guides. The first of these, on the use of ceramic tiles – which is one of the most common and problematic areas of building defects -- will be released this month.

As you are aware, a Construction 21 Steering Committee was set up last year, jointly by the Ministry of Manpower and the Ministry of National Development, to look into restructuring the construction industry to turn it into a more productive, professional and progressive industry. This will be achieved by amongst other things, raising the skills level of our construction workforce and improving the industry practices and building technique. The C21 report will be launched in a few weeks’ time.

Ladies and gentlemen, even as we slowly emerge from the economic downturn, there can be no slackening in our efforts to strive for better productivity and quality in construction. The restructuring of the construction workforce, the CONQUAS 21 Enhancement Programme and Construction 21, together with other on-going programmes such as the ISO 9000 Certification Scheme and the Public Sector Bonus Scheme for Construction Quality, will help to raise the industry’s capability to deliver the high quality buildings expected by consumers in the new millennium.

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