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THE SINGAPORE GOVERNMENT IS CONTINUING ITS CONCERTED EFFORT TO DRIVE UPTAKE OF NEW CONSTRUCTION METHODOLOGIES.
As reported in The Straits Times, the nation’s construction companies and government agencies are being encouraged to adopt new technology, with the latest push in the form of $295 million to be injected into two productivity schemes.
The BuildSG Transformation Fund (BTF) is a new scheme to consolidate existing funding schemes in the areas of Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA), and the latest funding injection brings the BuildSG Transformation Fund to about $770 million in financial aid for Singapore’s construction industry.
Meanwhile, another new scheme, called the Off-site Construction Special Scheme (OCSS), will be introduced in the second half of 2019 to make it cheaper to hire workers for off-site prefabrication work. Of the $295 million, the Productivity Innovation Project scheme will receive $200 million to help companies with solutions which offer at least a 30 percent improvement in site productivity.
Examples of technologies supported by the scheme are prefabricated bathrooms and self-compacting concrete, which is more efficient than normal concrete. The remaining $95 million will go into the Public Sector Construction Productivity Fund (PSCPF) to encourage government agencies to adopt Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) technology for their construction projects.
The OCSS will let construction companies hire workers at lower levies at the 15 DfMA facilities, potentially saving them between $250 and $300 per worker on levies. The initiatives are part of an industry-wide push to adopt new technology.
The National University of Singapore is also to pilot an inter-disciplinary module on prefabricated, pre-finished volumetric construction (PPVC) later this year. PPVC allows building components to be prefabricated under controlled off-site factory conditions and assembled on-site.■
