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Government offers $3.2b of contracts, $1.8b earmarked for construction firms

The Government plans to award an estimated $3.2 billion worth of projects over the next 12 months, the Ministry of Finance said on Friday.

The figure, which is the lowest in three years, is less than half of last year’s $7.5 billion and about a-third less than the $4.7 billion projected in 2005.

Today understands that the latest estimate is culled from the various public-sector agencies’ projections and may change during the course of the fiscal year ending Mar 31, 2008.

Of the present 933 procurement contracts, 258 of them worth some $1.8 billion are for building works. One of the major projects is a $65-million deal for the track work of Downtown Line 1.

The Ministry of Education will call for tenders for five school rebuilding and upgrading contracts worth $30 million each.

Information technology companies can look forward to more than 300 contracts worth a total of $730 million, which the Government had announced earlier in the week.

In the area of goods and services, tenders will amount to $635 million. Some of the big-ticket items include a tender for PUB’s $70-million sludge disposal for water recycling plants, and two National Environment Agency tenders for street cleaning worth another $70 million.

Separately, the Government will soon award a $1.5-billion contract to homogenise its computer infrastructure across most agencies. If this project for a Standard ICT Operating Environment is given out this year, the dollar figure will be added to the year’s actual contracts awarded, said a spokesperson from the Finance Ministry.

This pre-procurement plan was started in 2003 with the aim of giving suppliers and contractors early information on what the public sector planned to buy in the year.

More information can be found at www. gebiz.com.sg.

Source : Weekend Today - 28 Apr 2007

Laws to cut amount of material used in construction projects being drawn up

AN AMBITIOUS new plan to cut Singapore’s dependence on sand and granite will aim to halve the use of concrete in construction projects within the next five years.

New laws being drawn up as part of the Sustainable Construction Masterplan will limit how much concrete each project can use, and tell companies how to use alternative materials.

Projects which employ sustainable construction material - such as steel, dry walls, glass and metal cladding - could be cleared faster, the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) said yesterday.

Ongoing projects which switch to alternative designs and materials will gain too - such as in the approval of amendment plans.

The BCA will, over the next few months, review current British specifications for manufactured steel and look at adopting international standards.

Building safety, it stressed, will not be compromised.

The unveiling of the masterplan comes in the wake of Indonesia’s ban on land sand exports, which took effect in February.

While there is no official ban on granite exports, the Indonesian navy has detained several boats ferrying the material to Singapore.

This has cut off the annual supply of 6-8 million tonnes of sand and 10 million tonnes of granite - causing prices of both to skyrocket here.

In the immediate aftermath of Indonesia’s actions, the Singapore Government urged the construction industry to cut its reliance on sand and granite.

The two materials are the main components of concrete, used by 95 per cent of the building projects here.

Sand now costs about $60 a tonne, up from about $20 before the ban, while granite is going for $70 a tonne, up from $25.

Ready-mixed concrete has surged to between $180 and $200 a cubic metre from the earlier $70.

Reassuring the industry yesterday, Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu said concrete prices could drop soon.

From next month, the BCA may cut its stockpile release price for granite, Ms Fu said during the launch of a three-week exhibition on sustainable construction at the URA Centre in Maxwell Road.

She added that the Government has released sand and granite from national stockpiles and is also seeking other supply sources.

And a granite quarry in Pulau Ubin will reopen in about three to six months - pending studies on the impact to the environment and wildlife.

But these are not long-term solutions.

‘The disruption in the supply of concreting sand and granite from Indonesia is a wake-up call for the industry to switch to sustainable construction as much as possible and as soon as we can,’ she said.

Private developers The Straits Times spoke to welcomed the BCA’s intention to reduce the release price of granite.

But they added that they are still finding it difficult to share the burden of the increased cost of construction with their contractors.

The Government has urged private developers to follow its example of sharing up to three-quarters of the increase in the cost of sand and granite for ongoing public sector projects.

Mr Chia Hock Jin, executive director of the Real Estate Developers Association of Singapore, said members have been slow to respond to the request.

‘Not all developers will be able to afford footing three-quarters of the increase in costs,’ he said. ‘The Government should allow developers to determine the amount they should foot on a case-by-case basis.’

WAKE-UP CALL

‘The disruption in the supply of concreting sand and granite from Indonesia is a wake-up call for the industry to switch to sustainable construction as much as possible and as soon as we can.’MINISTER OF STATE FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT GRACE FU

Source : Straits Times - 24 Apr 2007

Recycled concrete now being used for road kerbs, drains; dry walls may replace brick walls

Materials from demolished buildings and incinerators may well find new use in the construction industry, which is seeking to wean itself from costly raw materials.

The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) yesterday unveiled a broad-based plan to beef up the building industry’s resilience against external pressures, such as the export ban on land sand by Indonesia, which has raised the cost of producing concrete.

Under the BCA’s Sustainable Construction Masterplan, research will be done into how building waste can be ploughed back into construction.

However, because waste materials need a lot of processing to remove impurities such as paint, more studies will be done into how such waste materials can be recycled, ‘especially if we want to use it for structural purposes’, the BCA said.

According to industry estimates, construction and demolition waste comes to about 1.2 million tonnes per year, of which about one million tonnes is concrete waste.

The BCA is also looking into ways to use copper slag - waste obtained from ship-blasting works - in place of sand.

Meanwhile, recycled concrete is being used for building road kerbs and drains in projects such as The Sail@Marina Bay and St Regis Hotel and Residences.

The Land Transport Authority is also running a trial on using recycled materials for road-base construction.

Dry walls - built with board mounted on metal frames with insulating material inside - are also being advocated as substitutes for conventional brick walls, which require sand to build.

The dry wall in City Developments’ residential project, City Square Residences, costs 24 per cent less - and is being built four times faster - than conventional brick walls built with sand at current prices.

The BCA, which has for some time now been trying to get the industry to switch to steel construction, had estimated before the sand- and granite-supply disruptions that a steel-based building would cost about 8 per cent to 10 per cent more than a concrete-based one to build.

This price gap has narrowed in recent weeks, however, following the hikes in sand and granite prices, which the BCA estimates will push construction costs up by about 7 per cent on average.

The president of the Singapore Contractors’ Association, Mr Desmond Hill, welcomed the BCA’s call to use recycled materials, but said more needed to be done to make such recycled materials more readily available.

He said: ‘I think we need more waste material recycling plants. The Government also needs to look at how to make it easier for contractors to get hold of recycled materials.’

Source : Straits Times - 24 Apr 2007

New scheme to step up use of alternative building materials over next 5 years

Your future home is likely to be constructed with less concrete as the Government seeks to step up the use of alternative and sustainable materials such as steel, glass and aluminium.

The aim is to reduce the use of concrete as a key construction material by 30 to 50 per cent over the next five years, through a Sustainable Construction Master Plan laid out by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA).

The plan comes in the wake of disruption in the supply of sand and granite — key components of concrete — following restrictions imposed by the Indonesian government.

The restrictions caused the price of concrete to jump from about $70 per cubic metre to between $180 and $200 now.

Steel is at least 10 per cent more expensive than the current cost of concrete, but BCA chief executive Dr John Keung said the gap between the two raw materials is “fast narrowing”.

Unveiling the BCA plan yesterday, Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu said the construction industry, in the long term, “must adopt sustainable construction in a comprehensive manner to reduce its vulnerability to disruptions in supply of essential materials”.

Over the next three months, the BCA will work with industry partners and relevant agencies to review existing rules and regulations.

For example, the BCA hopes to introduce a new code to encourage the use of recycled building materials — such as recycled concrete — in construction.

The BCA is also working with relevant agencies, such as the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Fire Safety and Shelter Department, to accord priority to amendment plans for on-going projects that are switching to sustainable designs and materials.

Construction standards will also be reviewed, including those for manufactured steel.

Currently, the steel allowed here for structural construction is based on British standards. But the BCA said it would release, in the next three months, a change in guidelines which will allow for other standards of steel and the import of steel from sources such as the United States or Japan.

Industry experts agreed that the move towards sustainable construction methods would be good for the industry.

DP Architects director Tai Lee Siang said the use of steel would bring about a cleaner and faster construction process. “In terms of long-term sustainability and recycle ability, steel is also better than concrete,” he added.

Mr Desmond Hill, president of the Singapore Contractors Association, said he would like to see developers become more flexible in the use of recycled building materials for non-structural components. This would help promote the use of sustainable materials in construction, he said.

On the manpower front, the BCA will run more courses to equip practitioners with better understanding of sustainable construction.

It is also in discussion with local universities to strengthen the curriculum on structural steel design.

Ms Fu also added that mining activity could start at the Kekek Granite Quarry in Pulau Ubin in three to six months. Reopening the quarry is part of the government’s plans to make up for the granite shortfall facing Singapore.

Source - Today - 24 Apr 2007

A Local company has come up with a granite replacement and has successfully used it to build roads in Brunei and widen the runways at Changi Airport.

Chemilink Technologies developed the method to stabilise and strengthen soil by adding a proprietary chemical concoction it first brewed about 10 years ago, but interest in its products is skyrocketing only now.

This is because its materials now cost half the price of conventional granite. The price of granite has risen from $25 to $70 a tonne since Indonesia halted sand shipments to Singapore in February and detained Singapore-bound granite barges suspected of smuggling sand.

Inventor and company executive director Wu Dong Qing said that his Jurong facility can supply 12,000 tonnes of material in the coming year.

This should be enough to meet the local demand for the construction of new roads and shipyard loading areas, which he estimated to be about 800,000 sqm, an area bigger than 70 football fields.

The 48-year-old naturalised Singaporean said: ‘By treating the soil at the worksite to replace granite, the use of quarry materials can be minimised.’

The company’s products have been tested and found to be harder, more water-resistant and easier to maintain than granite-based tarmac, even in swampy and weak soil areas and reclaimed land.

Now, Chemilink’s technology is being tested in building construction.

China-born Mr Wu, who earned his doctorate in geotechnical engineering at Nanyang Technological University in 1994, also sees great potential in recycling the concrete from demolished buildings.

‘That way, we can minimise construction costs and the impact on the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign suppliers,’ he said.

Source : Straits Times - 21 Apr 2007