Mr Quek See Tiat, Chairman, BCA
Dr John Keung, CEO, BCA,
Distingushed guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Building for the Future
      I am glad to be here this evening to celebrate the achievements of the industry and give recognition to those who have contributed towards our drive for construction excellence during the past year.  I am told we have a record 118 awards to be presented tonight, which is a reflection of the industry’s commitment to improving capabilities and productivity.

2     Sustaining the Growth of the industry. Amidst the backdrop of weak external demand and negative economic growth forecast for Singapore, the building and construction industry is the only sector that is recording growth this year.  Construction grew 24.4% year-on-year for the first quarter.  The growth of our industry should be a sustainable one.  We want to create jobs for Singaporeans, train our workers and nurture firms that are progressive to provide strong leadership for the industry.  We want to build long-term competitiveness.  This would require the industry to embrace technology, adopt best practices to enhance productivity on site, and build capabilities in key strategic areas.

3     This evening, I would like to touch on two key areas – firstly, the importance of investing in manpower development, and secondly, the need to build capabilities in new growth areas.

Investing in People and Nurturing Firms
4     Investing in Manpower Development. The key to sustainable growth in the industry lies in the capacity of its human resource.  The industry needs to train and retain a core group of high quality and committed individuals to anchor and lead the industry at all levels.  The industry should attract and retain talented people so that the industry can be progressive in tapping opportunities and pursuing high safety, productivity and quality standards. Investment in manpower development is more important during challenging economic times such as this. It is an opportunity for the industry to take advantage of the good growth prospects in a weak economic environment.

5     At the tradesman level, firms can tap the courses provided by the BCA Academy to upgrade the skills of their existing workers and train new workers.  These courses are subsidised by the Skills Development Fund (SDF) and the Skills Programme for Upgrading & Resilience, or SPUR. For PMETs, firms can put in place career progression plans to identify potential leaders early and prepare them for leadership roles in future.

6     Nurturing Firms. With strong leaders and skilled workers, firms will be in a better position to adopt world-class management systems.  Our construction firms should be forward-looking, willing to invest in people and in technology, and willing to adopt good practices.  They should enhance their construction capabilities as well as build up competence in operations, logistics, finance and risk management.    BCA will work closely with the industry to nurture firms with progressive and highly competitive business organisations. In this regard, we will be awarding the inaugural Built Environment Leadership Awards tonight to outstanding firms that have demonstrated excellence and leadership in shaping our built environment.

7     The Built Environment Leadership Award, conceptualised along the lines of the Singapore Quality Award (SQA), requires firms to embrace world-class management systems and practices in business excellence and continual improvement.  Firms are also assessed based on their contributions to the built environment through the type and number of BCA awards, such as the Construction Excellence Award, BCA Green Mark, Universal Design Award, and other local and international awards attained by the firm.

8     I am pleased to note that we have one Platinum award winner and seven Gold Class winners this evening. I hope these winners will encourage others to strive for higher standards of management and quality to deliver a world-class built environment for Singapore.

Building Capabilities in New Growth areas
9     Let me now go on to the new growth areas that are awaiting the industry.

10    Complex Civil Engineering Construction Works. Our local builders have the potential to take on complex civil engineering works.  In our densely built up environment, and as we go deeper underground, civil engineering projects will become more complex. Infrastructural works such as underground expressways and MRT tunnels also require different skill sets, expertise and equipment.

11    I encourage the industry to capitalise on the potential pipeline of works, that include about $50 billion worth of civil engineering projects in the next 10 years, to recruit and train their staff in the relevant areas of expertise, invest in technology and build capability to take on such complex projects.

12    Embracing Environmental Sustainability. Another key emerging growth area is in the arena of sustainable development. The recently launched Sustainable Singapore blueprint sets out goals and initiatives for 2030, targeted at improving energy efficiency.  Under the plan, we aim to reduce Singapore’s overall energy intensity by 35% from 2005 levels by 2030. To achieve this, a key goal set by BCA under its second Green Building Masterplan is to green 80% of our buildings by 2030. Let me elaborate on some key features of this Masterplan.

13    First, the Government has set up a new $100 million fund to help building owners upgrade and improve the energy performance of their existing buildings.  For new developments, private developers can now obtain additional Gross Floor Area or GFA for their developments that attain Green Mark standards of Goldplus and Platinum or equivalent.

14    New Green Mark Schemes. BCA’s second Green Building Masterplan also sets out the strategy to deliver a sustainable built environment in a more holistic manner, looking beyond buildings to include other parts of the built environment.

15    Three new Green Mark schemes will be implemented for Infrastructure, Landed Houses and Office Interiors. These new schemes provide a framework to assess the environmental impact and performance for these specific developments. For example, the Green Mark for Office Interiors evaluates whether offices within the building are managed and operated in a sustainable manner, to achieve continued energy and water efficiency as well as maintaining good indoor environmental quality.

16    To support the industry in the implementation of the 2nd Green Building Masterplan, BCA will provide training courses for an estimated 18,000 green specialists at the PMET level over the next 10 years.  This will cover the entire value chain of green buildings, ranging from development, design and construction, to the operation and maintenance stages.

Conclusion
17    In concluding, I would like to congratulate all the award winners this evening for your outstanding achievements in the various fields.  Before I end off my speech, I'd like to draw your attention to what the Prime Minister announced in Parliament about the formation of an Economic Strategy Committee. He had outlined several strategies and options that this committee will be reviewing. And I thought it would be appropriate for me to highlight to all of you sitting here, who are in the construction and building industry, two pertinent issues that you may be interested in. The first, of course, is the development of corporate capabilities in Singapore. And that is not just limited to the traditional global MNCs that we have operating here. We also hope to grow capabilities of local MNCs as well.

18    The second part is to look at how we should review the efficiency of our input factors to the economy, particularly in the area of manpower, whether we should review our dependency on foreign workers going forward. So these are two areas that are perhaps of interest to you and you may like to pay additional attention to them. Let us continue to work closely in partnership, to ride out the current economic downturn, invest in upgrading our people and plan ahead to strengthen our long-term competitive edge by building capabilities in growth areas. Thank you.

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