A new ‘Action Team to Improve Built Environment Productivity’ has been set up to study and develop measures to achieve greater savings in time, cost and manpower. It is chaired by Minister for National Development Chee Hong Tat, with Alvin Tan, Minister of State for National Development & Trade and Industry as the deputy chair.

Members will consist of “representatives from government agencies and the industry, including developers, consultants, contractors, facility managers and academics,” shared Mr Chee at the official opening of SCAL Construction Hub on Friday (6 Feb). This will allow the team to tap on diverse perspectives from industry stakeholders.

Building upon the ongoing built environment (BE) transformation efforts, the Action Team will consider initiatives to further drive enterprise transformation, reduce regulatory compliance burden, and develop system enablers that benefit the BE ecosystem.

“We will look at actionable things that we can do; we want to translate ideas into action, so that it can benefit the industry,“ said Mr Chee. “To make an impact, the Action Team will need to work on challenging issues facing the industry, and relook at how we plan, manage and grow Singapore’s built environment industry.”

The Action Team will focus on three key areas:

• Drive enterprise transformation through the adoption of productive technologies and progressive practices.

• Review the regulatory approach to reduce regulatory compliance burden, support innovation, and improve procurement and contracting practices.

• Support an enabling ecosystem by recommending measures that reap system-level synergies and address industry-wide challenges.

The main committee – of which Mr Chee and Mr Tan are chair and deputy chair respectively – will be supported by two sub-committees:

1. The enterprise transformation sub-committee will focus on driving firm-level transformation and will identify opportunities to accelerate the adoption and scale-up of productive technologies and progressive methods that can achieve time, cost and manpower savings. It will be co-chaired by Kelvin Wong, CEO of Building and Construction Authority (BCA), and Neil Yong, deputy chairman of Woh Hup (Pte) Ltd.

2. The ecosystem & regulatory review sub-committee will focus on addressing system-level challenges/constraints, as well as driving system-level transformation. Its scope will include reducing regulatory compliance burden, improving procurement and contracting practices to save time, cost and manpower, and driving collaborations to address industry-wide challenges. It will be co-chaired by Cham Dao Song, deputy secretary (planning) at Ministry of National Development, and Khor Eng Leong, managing director of Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co (Singapore) Pte Ltd.

“In the coming months, the Action Team will engage widely to hear the views and feedback from our industry stakeholders. We would like to welcome everyone to please share your ideas and your suggestions with the Action Team,” said Mr Chee.

“And please be candid, no need to sugarcoat. If there are some areas that you think we really need to do better, there are some pain points that we need to address, there are some rules that are outdated and need to be updated, please tell us.”

Mr Chee also urged the industry to strengthen “collaborative partnerships to harness greater synergies, reduce inefficiencies and amplify our collective impact.”

“Our plan is to scale up the adoption of collaborative contracting in Singapore, to make it a more pervasive industry norm,” he said. “And we want to encourage more government agencies, as well as private sector developers and firms to come on board.”

SGBuildex platform

Mr Chee further introduced a new data exchange platform, SGBuildex, to increase efficiency. “For example, builders currently submit monthly productivity data manually using Excel templates through BCA’s Electronic Productivity Submission System, but they way the data is submitted is not very productive,” he noted.

From May this year, BCA will automate such submissions using SGBuildex, a data exchange platform, announced Mr Chee. “Contractors can set up the linkages between their worksite biometric authentication systems and SGBuildex, to eliminate the need for manual submissions that currently take up to half a day per month of an employee’s time.

“This integrated system also uses a unified and simplified data structure for greater data accuracy. So not only does this save time, we also cut down on unnecessary unintended human errors.”

According to Mr Chee, the SGBuildex platform is currently in its voluntary phase. “I would like to encourage everyone to onboard this way of submitting the data for smoother operations, before we look at mandatory implementation for new projects starting from May 2026.”