MSO works with government agencies and Town Councils (TCs) to improve the productivity and cost-efficiency of municipal service delivery. This is pertinent as Singapore experiences a slower labour force growth in the coming years. MSO has focused our efforts on improving the planning and design of local infrastructure, such as covered linkways, and streamlining workflows to facilitate timely responses to residents’ needs.
Good upstream planning and design of local infrastructure improves the ease of maintenance and upkeep of these infrastructure in the long run.
MSO has worked with several government agencies to identify design features and develop design guidelines to facilitate the cleaning and landscape maintenance of public infrastructure. These guidelines would be incorporated into BCA’s Design for Maintainability Checklist [1]. This includes design features that would help prevent the accumulation of litter in public infrastructure, as well as facilitate greater mechanisation in cleaning operations.
Facilitating Timely Response to Residents’ Needs
MSO will also work with agencies to streamline workflows in order to facilitate timely responses to residents’ local infrastructure needs. One area that MSO has worked with government agencies on in the past year is the planning, development and maintenance of connectivity infrastructure.
Local infrastructure is funded today by various schemes, including LTA’s Walk2Ride Scheme for covered linkways leading to transport nodes, Community Involvement Projects Committee (CIPC) Scheme for HDB estates, and Estate Upgrading Programme (EUP) Scheme for private estates. However, there is a funding gap for local infrastructure, such as footpaths, lightings and railings. To meet this need, MSO has piloted a small funding scheme with our agencies since 2014. Some 140 requests were received over the past four years. Examples of some projects funded under the scheme are included in Annex A.
The pilot has shown that there is a need for sustained funding for such small-scale local infrastructure. Residents have also benefited from such infrastructure which improves connectivity, as well as enhances accessibility, safety and security.As such, MSO will launch a permanent Local Infrastructure Projects (LIP) Scheme for small-scale local infrastructure on State Land in 2018. For a start, the LIP Scheme will have a budget of $3.6M over the next two years, and will support residents’ needs for small-scale infrastructure at the local level such as widening of footpaths, covered linkways, railings, lightings, etc.
Besides the new funding scheme, MSO has also worked with agencies to develop escalation mechanisms for the timely resolution of inter-agency challenges on the planning, development and maintenance of connectivity infrastructure.
[1] The DM Checklist has been formulated by BCA to provide a set of design recommendations and best practices to aid developers and architects in integrating maintainability concepts in the upstream design processes, thereby promoting quality design with consideration of productivity, safety and labour efficiency in downstream maintenance activities.