Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the Topping Out Ceremony of Avenue South Residence

Friday, 25 February 2022

A very good morning. Thank you for inviting me to join you to celebrate a milestone in our DfMA journey at the Avenue South Residence.

A World Record PPVC project

It was not too long ago when we launched the Construction Industry Transformation Map in 2017, and we identified Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) as an important catalyst for transformation.

In 2021, around 44% of building projects by Gross Floor Area (GFA) adopted DfMA. We are on track to meet our target of 70% of GFA by 2025, and we must press on. Now, we achieved this through close collaboration with our firms. And that is absolutely critical. For instance, BCA formed a Building Innovation Panel (BIP) to speed up regulatory clearance for firms who wanted to use innovative methods in their projects, including PPVC (or Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction) technologies.

56 storeys high and standing at almost 200m, the two towers of Avenue South Residence are set to be the world’s tallest PPVC buildings when completed. Now, UOL already currently holds this record since 2019 with The Clement Canopy at 140m or 40 storeys high. This new milestone with Avenue South Residence demonstrates your ambition to constantly push boundaries. So congratulations to UOL and United Tec Construction as well as the rest of the project team for yet another record-breaking achievement.

Overcoming the challenges of COVID-19

COVID-19 has hit many sectors very hard, including the Built Environment (BE) sector. If you look back to 2020 - those were really tough times. We had to implement many painful public health measures during the pandemic to stem the spread of the virus. And not only did it have an impact to construction and livelihoods and firms’ future, it also had an impact socially, emotionally, on mental health and many other concerns. We even had to take the unprecedented step of halting all construction work for some time, taking care of our infected migrant workers, and adopt robust safe management measures. But even after construction works restarted, many projects still faced difficult challenges. We had to answer lots of questions, tackle lots of issues, work with lots of firms, lots of site visits; we had daily meetings, to get the engine restarted. Those were difficult and tumultuous times, and we still face challenges such as manpower shortages, and cost increases. To address these, we provided significant support to the Built Environment sector throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

But I am encouraged that firms also did their part to keep projects going, and support the rest of the firms within their alliance despite the disruptions brought about by the pandemic. The Avenue South Residence project is one such example. In fact, the project is still on target to complete, as originally planned. Now you might ask, how did UOL and United Tec Construction achieve this? Please allow me to share some of the ‘secret sauce’.

First, you used PPVC or Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction. This reduced your reliance on manpower as well as the time spent on construction on-site. Because a lot of PPVC is done off-site. This helped you to mitigate the manpower constraints caused by COVID-19 border measures over the last two years.  

Second, you and your project members made good use of digital tools, to do detailed planning and coordination, which resulted in the smooth execution of the project. For instance, you put in a system to automate the tracking of PPVC modules. This enabled the project team to track the progress real time, from shell production, to fitting out and to installation on-site. And I may say, especially in a crisis, especially when things are so uncertain, having the digital tools at your fingertips, having real time information to project and plan, in complex projects with multiple partners makes a lot of difference.

Third, you had excellent supply chain planning capabilities and you put in place contingency plans when materials from overseas were disrupted. For example, United Tec kept sufficient inventory of PPVC modules which allowed the team to ride out the disruptions, especially at the height of the pandemic when production work had to stop. And it struck me how builders needed to adapt and pick up new skills such as supply chain planning, while managing the immediate impact of the pandemic.

And so in a way, this project has shown us that it is still possible to press on with our transformative efforts, even in the midst of a crisis as big as a pandemic, as long as all partners are committed to this goal. And in fact, I think many of the firms who have done well are those who made good use of the crisis and use all these capabilities and tools; and in a way when peace prevails, I think we will be in far finer shape than others.

But apart from being the tallest building in the world to be constructed using PPVC, Avenue South Residence also features innovations in automation, as well as sustainability. This is the first residential building in Singapore that uses robots for lift installation. This would enable the project team to get the job done with half the workers normally required, and the manpower saved could be deployed to other areas. In addition, the robots reduce repetitive and physically-demanding tasks, such as drilling and setting anchor bolts for elevator guide rails and landing doors. I can imagine how taxing and time-consuming this work would otherwise be, if done manually, given the level of precision needed and also just simply how tall the project is.

Now with the deployment of robots, Mr Jeff Ng, a senior engineer at Schindler, now oversees a wider breadth of operations. He takes on new tasks such as conducting feasibility studies for deployment, programming the robots and troubleshooting. The use of robots not only ushers in new ways of working, but helps create higher-skilled jobs which we all hope will be attractive to younger Singaporeans and attract them to join the industry.

The team is also doing its part in environmental sustainability by using CarbonCure, a type of green concrete, which reduces carbon emissions by about 4% compared to conventional concrete. Through the use of this technology, ASR is able to reduce about 100 tonnes of carbon emissions for this project.

These outcomes are only achievable because everyone working on the project shared a common vision, and took a long-term view of partnership. Compared to other sectors, the Built Environment projects tend to involve many more vendors and suppliers. There are deep and extensive inter-dependencies among the stakeholders all along the entire Built Environment value chain.

We will therefore need more of such effective partnerships to foster growth, drive innovation, and uplift and transform the entire sector. So as I said, on previous occasions, having talked to many seniors in the sectors who have given me guidance and advice, actually for the Built Environment sector, it is not possible for any one firm on your own, to significantly and gainfully transform, without anyone else in the ecosystem or along the value chain playing their part. And that is why moving beyond a project-based or firm-based scheme to help in industry transformation, we announced a Growth and Transformation Scheme (GTS) last year to further support the formation of strategic alliances in the Built Environment sector to collaborate and transform together. Now, BCA has worked out the details of this scheme, and we will share more about it in due course. And we hope firms, up and down of the value chain will collaborate with the alliances, make good use of this scheme, and transform as a whole.  

Pushing Forward with industry transformation

Now, the Avenue South Residence project is a good example of how the Built Environment sector can be more productive, sustainable and resilient.

While the BE sector has seen promising recovery in recent months, we recognise that the construction industry is still facing a significant manpower shortage, and buyers are still concerned about the delays of their new homes and premises.

We will continue to work with the industry to increase the inflow of workers so that firms can complete their ongoing projects. But at the same time, we must not take our eye off the ball. We must continue to accelerate our push towards higher productivity and more manpower-lean construction for future projects.

And that is why we have adjusted our foreign manpower policies, as announced by my colleague, Minister Lawrence Wong, recently at Budget. For instance, we will reduce the Dependency Ratio Ceiling (or DRC) for the Construction sector from 1:7 to 1:5. We will also replace the Man-Year Entitlement framework (MYE) with a new levy framework that will encourage firms to support more off-site work and employ more higher-skilled work permit holders.

We had announced last year that we were studying these moves. We explained in Parliament why, and now we have made these moves to take place over the next few years. In addition, we will move the industry towards more productive methods of construction.

For example, from April this year, larger buildings must be designed in ways that require less manpower to construct. This means that our industry will need fewer workers when starting the construction of these buildings in 2024, which is also when the new workforce policies take effect.

For firms that have yet to start this journey, the key is to take that first step and build up the momentum and tenacity to transform. It will not be easy, and the going will definitely be tough. But we must push ahead together.

For firms who are leading the pack, I encourage you to continue striving for even better outcomes – greater resilience, higher technology adoption, and forming strategic partnerships. So that we can be well-prepared to seize the opportunities that lie ahead, and be front of the pack. Please help us to energise, to excite, to inspire and literally to show to the rest of the sector and bring them along with us on this important journey.

Government will continue to engage you, to partner you on this journey, support you as we have done. We will also provide support for firms to transform, and will share more about this in the weeks ahead.

Closing Remarks

Let me conclude by congratulating the UOL and United Tec Construction team once again, together with all your partners. You have demonstrated what our Singaporean firms are capable of, and your story will be an inspiration to many other firms. I hope that in celebrating Avenue South Residence, you will also celebrate the many people who helped bring this project to a fruition, so that they, and all of you can inspire the next generation of Singaporeans, that coming into the Built Environment sector, building Singapore, growing Singapore, greening Singapore, making our city sustainable, is an industry, is a career worth joining, and worth fighting for.  

I wish you every success for this project, and many more.

Thank you.