Opening Address by Minister Chee Hong Tat At The Singapore Archifest 2026 Opening Reception and Exhibition

Architect Tiah Nan Chyuan, President of Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA),
Past Presidents of SIA, 
SIA Council Members,
Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

A very good evening, I am happy to join everyone here for the opening of Singapore Archifest 2026.

Let me start by congratulating the Singapore Institute of Architects, or SIA, on the 20th edition of this festival. Over the years, Singapore Archifest has grown from a local celebration of architecture into a platform that connects Singapore to the global architectural conversation. 

And by bringing together architects, designers, students, and the public, Archifest does something vital: it brings that global conversation directly onto our shores, into our public spaces, and deep into our communities, inviting everyone to shape the city that we build and live in. 

Partnering the Architectural Community

I spoke about this spirit of collectively shaping our built environment at the SIA Annual Dinner last year. Our architects are important partners in driving Singapore’s urban transformation, translating bold visions into tangible form, and turning plans into vibrant places where people live, work, and play. 

This evening, please allow me to share a few initiatives that built on this continued partnership.

Public Engagement and Design for Jubilee Park at Fort Canning

The first initiative is about bringing designers and communities together for placemaking, something which this festival also advocates for. 

We have seen this come to life at past editions of Archifest. For example, at Kampong Glam and Joo Chiat, the partnership between Archifest and URA’s public space programme sparked conversations about how design can transform a neighbourhood. We have also seen this at work in our design competitions. For example, in the recent competitions on Raffles Place Park and the Queensway node of our Rail Corridor, public engagement played an integral role. We brought designers, communities, and stakeholders early into the conversations to ensure that the design brief proposed during the competition was grounded in how people use and experience these spaces. 

In the same spirit, URA, with the support of NParks, will be embarking on a public engagement exercise and design competition to develop a new pavilion and public space at Jubilee Park at Fort Canning.  As we know, Fort Canning holds a very special place in Singapore’s history and in the hearts of many Singaporeans, and this is an opportunity to add a new layer to that story. We will be engaging a wide range of stakeholders, from Built Environment industry partners and park users to members of the public, so that everyone’s voices and aspirations can help to shape the design brief from the outset. Based on the feedback provided, we will then invite architects and designers to bring your best ideas forward. 

I hope this project will bring out the creativity among our architects and designers, including our young architects and young designers, similar to how other initiatives like PLAY@Punggol have provided opportunities for practising designers to create playful and imaginative public spaces. 

Nurturing Future Architects

Engaging our practising architects is important, and it is equally important to inspire our younger generation whom we hope will join our industry in future. I was very heartened to hear Architect Nan Chyuan earlier speak about the student design competition that SIA, and our polytechnics are organising together, and BCA will also be part of this. And this, I hope, will give our younger generation a platform to turn their dreams and concepts into design. This is the kind of collaborative effort we need to nurture - to be able to work together to groom more architects to join our profession. I look forward to meeting our students and learning more about their ideas. 

Facilitating Greater Design for Maintainability (DfM) Adoption 

The second initiative that I want to share with everyone, lies at the heart of what architects do – shaping our Built Environment (BE) for generations to come. Your design decisions on façade access, material selection and building systems layout shape how a building will perform, how environmentally sustainable it will be and how well the building can serve its occupants for decades to come. 

BCA has been advocating for the BE sector to adopt the Design for Maintainability, or DfM mindset. This entails incorporating longer-term maintainability considerations into the design process and investing more capex upfront, to enjoy greater cost and manpower savings across the building’s life cycle. The initial upfront investment will be more, but if you look at it as a life cycle, you get a positive return. 

To date, 67 projects have obtained the Green Mark Maintainability Badge, demonstrating good performance in the adoption of DfM measures. 

To quantify the benefits of DfM, BCA worked with Surbana Jurong to demonstrate the DfM business case in four local developments – two existing commercial buildings, one new commercial development, and one new residential development. Let me share some of the preliminary findings.

First, adopting DfM can yield annual operational savings that allows for net positive returns after a relatively short payback period. Across the three commercial buildings that I mentioned earlier, the potential annual operational savings from adopting DfM ranged from $310,000 to $950,000. The majority of DfM measures incorporated had a payback of less than six years, some less than two years. For the residential development, the potential operational savings can be up to $110,000 per annum, with the majority of DfM measures having a payback of less than five years.

For example, Shaw Tower included a simple cat ladder access to its cooling tower. This allows efficient, safe, and easy periodic access to maintain the fan and basin at the top, instead of setting up scaffolding access each time maintenance is needed. With this, Shaw Tower can enjoy lifecycle savings of over $750,000 with a payback period of just three years. With cooling towers having a typical 15-year service life, recovering the upfront investment in just three years means net positive returns thereafter for the remaining 12 years.  

There are also meaningful manpower productivity gains from adopting DfM. The study found that all DfM features deployed helped to reduce annual maintenance man-days, with many achieving savings of more than 60%. The biggest gains came from architectural decisions – choices about design specifications, floor materials, ceiling types, and façade access – and this reinforces the point that maintainability should be an upfront design consideration.

Across the three commercial buildings studied, the additional costs of incorporating DfM measures amounted to 0.6% to 1.5% of total construction cost. For the residential development, it was even lower, at just 0.2% of the total construction cost. I am sharing these figures with everyone, these findings from the study, because I think the numbers for these four projects – three commercial and one residential – clearly demonstrates that an approach like this is good for the building owner and it is good for the ecosystem.

I would like to encourage more developers and architects to embrace DfM to reap the cost and manpower savings. Eventual building owners and tenants would definitely appreciate the value that has been created upstream, which will add value to their properties.  

BCA will be working with SIA and other BE stakeholders to seek feedback on how the study's findings can be made more useful and actionable, before the final report is released later this year. I would like to encourage everyone here to participate, share your views, give us your feedback, and help us see how we can make further improvements in this area to scale up the adoption of DfM. 

Revised Phasing Plans for CORENET X 

I will move on to the third initiative which is our plans for CORENET X. CORENET X has been an important step forward in digitalising our building regulatory processes, consolidating over 20 regulatory touchpoints across multiple agencies into one single platform.

Since becoming mandatory from 1 October 2025 for new projects with Gross Floor Area (GFA) above 30,000 square metres, more than 140 projects involving 300 firms have been submitted via CORENET X. And firms have seen time savings of up to two months from faster regulatory approvals, cost savings from reduced abortive work and fewer resubmissions, as well as greater coordination clarity across disciplines and within project teams.

We have been reviewing the system and taking in feedback from the industry. We have observed that the benefits of the CORENET X gateway process are more significant for larger projects, while smaller projects generally uncovered fewer discrepancies through the upfront coordination in CORENET X. Larger projects are also more complex, involve more agencies and they often require more regulatory submissions. As a result, they benefit much more from early coordination across project stakeholders and agencies, which helps to resolve issues upfront and reduce downstream delays.  

At the same time, we understand that the many firms that are undertaking smaller projects are limited in terms of their resources, and they have constraints and challenges. The benefits of using CORENET X for smaller projects may not be worth the costs incurred. 

We have heard your feedback and we will adjust our plans:

First, all new projects with GFA 5,000 square metres and above will be required to make submissions via CORENET X from 1 October 2026. This will extend CORENET X to medium-sized projects, bringing 50 additional new projects each year onto the platform.

Second, it is no longer mandatory for projects with GFA below 5,000 square metres to make submissions via the CORENET X gateway processes. Agencies will continue to streamline the submission process and to improve the user experience for these smaller projects.

Ongoing projects on CORENET 2.0 and projects below 5,000 square metres can continue to use CORENET 2.0 for now. Firms that are ready to onboard CORENET X for their projects are still encouraged to do so, as there can be benefits to using CORENET X even though it is not mandatory. We are encouraging you to do – If you think there are benefits, you are allowed to do so, but it is not mandatory; we will leave the companies to decide for the smaller projects. BCA will also continue to provide support to firms of all sizes throughout your CORENET X journey. 

I want to be upfront. This is a change from our earlier position. Earlier we decided that we will onboard all projects onto CORENET X, and not just larger projects of GFA 5,000 square metres and above. But we decided to make this change after we have listened to the industry feedback, after we have worked with all of you, and we want to refine our approaches. Because at the end of the day, it is not about sticking to our original announcement; it is about coming up with a policy and an arrangement that will best meet the needs of our stakeholders. Our end in mind is to support firms on the different challenges that you face, while we continue to push for practical ways to transform our sector and the three “saves” that I always share with our industry partners – We want to help you save time, save cost and save manpower. 

I was telling my colleagues that while we must have the iron in our spine to take calculated risks and push for bold changes, I want to assure everyone that we are not dogmatic and we are not “iron teeth” (or “tee kee” in Hokkien).  We cannot be stubborn in our approach. We must be pragmatic and we must focus on solving practical problems that our industry is facing, that our companies are facing, our workers are facing. When we need to change, we must be prepared to change. But when there is no need to change, we must also acknowledge that there is no need to change. We make practical decisions to see what works best. 

This is also the approach that I hope to take for the Action Team to Improve Built Environment Productivity, which brings together Government and industry representatives - I see some of our members in the audience - to review industry practices, to reduce regulatory burden and to streamline processes.

Since its formation, the Action Team has been discussing possible policy and process improvements that can help our companies to be able to improve productivity, save time, save costs and save manpower. And we also want to strengthen our manpower and capability development efforts. 

For instance, we have heard feedback from some companies on the shortage of BIM-proficient manpower, particularly amongst our smaller SMEs. We will continue to partner BE stakeholders to ramp up training opportunities and look at how we can further support firms with your manpower needs from both local and foreign sources.

We welcome your ideas and we hope to work together with you and your colleagues to unlock new possibilities for our sector. Earlier, Nan Chyuan was very kind to share some of the changes we have made. I hope they have benefitted the industry. But those changes that he mentioned actually came from the industry. It is because of your willingness to share your feedback with us. Sometimes I meet some of you over group lunches, sometimes we have dialogue sessions. It is because of your willingness to share your ideas and your feedback with us, that have enabled my colleagues and I to make those changes. I hope this partnership can continue, and I hope you continue to share your views with us, so that together we are able to achieve those goals for our sector. 

Closing

Twenty years ago, Archifest began as a platform to celebrate architecture and to bring it closer to the public. This evening, as I look around this room, I think it has become something much more – a community which inspires one another, a conversation that keeps renewing itself, and an inspiring story of the ambition and creativity that continues to define our profession.

American architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own, we have no soul of our own civilisation.” The buildings and spaces that we design shape how we feel, how we connect with one another, and how we experience our city. This is a profound responsibility, and one that I know all of you carry with great dedication and passion.

The Government will continue to support our profession and support you on this journey. We want to create opportunities, we want to invest in capabilities, and we want to work together with you. Our best outcomes are realised when we work as one team, bound by a shared sense of purpose and a steadfast commitment to quality. 

Together, we can build a Singapore that is not only efficient and sustainable, but also inspiring, inclusive, and most importantly, a home that we are all proud of. 

Thank you very much everyone.