BCA confers awards on five Professional Engineers for their engineering feats

Monday, 29 April 2019

Singapore, 29 April 2019 - Recognising their engineering feats which resulted in the safe implementation of their projects despite the challenges, five Professional Engineers were commended under the Building and Construction Authority's (BCA) Design and Engineering Safety Award 2019. Of the five, three Professional Engineers were given the Excellence Award, while the other two were accorded the Merit Award.

BCA Group Director (Building Engineering) and Commissioner of Building Control Engineer Chew Keat Chuan said, "Professional Engineers play an important role in our built environment, ensuring the safety of our buildings while transforming the way we build Singapore. The Design and Engineering Safety Award honours Singapore's best engineering talents who have developed creative engineering solutions to overcome challenging architectural designs and site constraints to bring their projects to their safe completion. We hope that the recognition will inspire Singaporeans towards making an impact on our country's development through a fulfilling and rewarding career in our built environment."

Excellence Award winner: Engineer Kam Mun Wai – Frasers Tower

Situated in heart of Singapore's Central Business District, Frasers Tower is an iconic and slender 38-storey high-rise tower with its sloping facade. Engineer Kam's challenges for this project were the variable ground conditions which affected how he had to design its structural foundation, the site's close proximity to other buildings -- including a 94-year-old national monument -- in the dense city centre, and its architectural design with the facade sloped at a five-degree angle.

To protect the structural integrity of the adjacent buildings -- including the monument, Engineer Kam devised a solution using earth retaining wall structures and a "top-down" construction method to minimise any ground movement during construction. In catering for the building's angled façade, Engineer Kam designed a complex but robust system of structural elements by analysing the forces and loads that were exerted to each element while keeping to its architectural design. He also designed the building’s foundation such that it optimises the favourable ground conditions, reducing the amount of materials and resources needed for its construction.

Excellence Award winner: Engineer Aaron Foong - The Arc

The Arc is one of the Nanyang Technological University's newest buildings in its campus with smart classrooms and a 108-seat lecture theatre. Its architectural design resembles a piano or a harp (i.e., a curvilinear building geometry) and includes two basement levels of classrooms and workshops. Engineer Foong's challenge was to integrate its architecture with an existing 16-m unbalanced sloping terrain, which contains existing network of telecommunication and electrical cables, and fire hydrant pipes that lead to other buildings, and its close proximity to many existing buildings.

To overcome these challenges, Engineer Foong used building information modelling (BIM) for The Arc's design and construction of its foundation, to detect and avoid clashes with the existing service pipes and cables. Engineer Foong's engineering solution allowed these existing underground services to co-exist with the Arc's piled foundation without costly and time-consuming works to divert them. Also, he modelled a three-dimensional sequence of the excavation works for the 16-m unbalanced slope such that the builders could complete them safely and systematically.

The Design and Engineering Safety Award winners will be recognised at the BCA Awards ceremony held on the evening of 29 May 2019 at the Resorts World Sentosa. Guest-of-Honour Minister of State for National Development and Manpower, Mr Zaqy Mohamad will present the award to the deserving winners during the ceremony.

Annexes

Annex - BCA Design and Engineering Safety Award winners (933kB .pdf)

Portable document format version of the media release is also available (788kB .pdf).