The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) has partnered the built environment industry and academia to develop a new iBuildSG Leadership Engagement and Development (LEAD) framework to support leadership development within the sector. BCA is also working with the industry to pilot a new, voluntary Maintainable Design Appraisal System (or MiDAS in short) from May this year. These were announced at the BCA Awards 2019 ceremony by Minister of State for National Development and Manpower, Zaqy Mohamad.
The iBuildSG LEAD framework is an initiative under the Construction Industry Transformation Map to develop leaders within the workforce who can drive sustained industry transformation efforts. Targeted at young emerging leaders, to potential and existing C-suite leaders, the framework aims to build leadership capability and capacity at various levels:
i) At the industry level, the framework builds collective stewardship and develops networks for leaders to foster strong collaboration across the construction value chain.
ii) At the firm level, the framework supports firms in developing talent and growing their leadership pipeline so each firm has the bench strength to grow domestically and abroad.
iii) At individual level, the framework helps industry practitioners build up their competencies to advance the sector, and recognises those with outstanding contributions.
There will be three leadership building platforms within the framework, anchored by two bespoke structured programmes, LEAD Horizon Programme and LEAD Milestone Programme. BCA will partner the Singapore Management University (SMU) as the anchor institution for both the Horizon and Milestone Training Programmes. SMU’s strengths in industry collaboration and management skills will enhance the participants’ leadership competencies in these areas. In addition, BCA will collaborate with the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) on a technical track within the LEAD Horizon Programme to run an innovation bootcamp. To complement the above, a third platform, Insights@LEAD comprising a series of events and initiatives will further thought leadership and provide opportunities for co-creation through alignment and collaboration across the LEAD community.
As part of the initiatives to uplift the Facilities Management (FM) sector–a key focus under the Real Estate Industry Transformation Map–BCA brought together the industry, unions, and other public agencies to form a Tripartite FM Implementation Committee (FMIC) to develop, oversee, and review the implementation of the sector’s transformation plans. FMIC identified Design for Maintainability (DfM) as a key pillar in transforming the FM sector. DfM is the practice of integrating operations & maintenance considerations into project planning and design to achieve effectiveness, safety, and economy of maintenance tasks.
BCA has worked with the industry and two tertiary institutions—SUTD and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU)—on a new, voluntary Maintainable Design Appraisal System (MiDAS), which assesses the degree of maintainability of building designs from the lens of labour efficiency and cost-effectiveness of downstream maintenance regimes. Through MiDAS, BCA aims to:
i) Foster greater collaboration among designers, developers, and FM practitioners to deliver better and more maintainable designs;
ii) Promote holistic sustainability by considering not only environmental aspects but also economic and social through reducing costs and reliance on manual labour for building maintenance;
iii) Enable designers and developers to make more informed design decisions upfront and take a life-cycle view of the development—including considerations for not only initial capital expenditure but also operating expenses.
MiDAS will be piloted in about 10 public and private projects including the new Surbana Jurong Campus, Ascendas Singbridge’s integrated development, Ascent, and PSA’s new office building at Pasir Panjang.
To raise awareness of the importance of DfM and help the industry keep abreast of good DfM practices—including safe maintenance access, use of appropriate building materials and adoption of technology—to enable efficient maintenance activities downstream, BCA collaborated with industry stakeholders and government agencies to put together a set of DfM guides. The guides, which are available on BCA’s website, are customised to different building types, specifically residential buildings, non-residential buildings and municipal infrastructure. — Construction+ Online
