Cheng Tai Fatt – director, corporate development division – Building and Construction Authority, Government of  Singapore.  

When did Singapore first publically support BIM?

We first advocated the use of object-based CAD tools in the late 1990s. But during the early years, the tools then were not that matured and take-up rate was not high. Recent years has seen the global use of BIM and we started to explore this in 2009 with pilot projects. We have since opened up the CORENET e-submission system to accept architectural submissions for regulatory approval in Jan 2010 and this was followed by the acceptance of structural and MEP BIM e-submissions in April 2011.

We have also announced to the industry the mandatory requirements of BIM for regulatory building plan approval starting from 2013. To drive up the adoption rate of BIM, we have set up a Centre for Construction IT to handhold the industry through the BIM journey.

and also put in place an incentive scheme to subsidy the costs in procuring hardware/software and training/consultancy services to enable a firm to be BIM ready.

What have been the benefits?

BIM has been identified by Singapore as one of the key technology drivers to raise construction productivity significantly. In addition, it has been demonstrated through the use of BIM, there will be significant manpower savings in terms of producing production drawings as well as cost savings gains through less abortive work downstream as a result of better coordinated design and construction activities upstream.

What is your message to other governments/ authorities who are currently not supporting the widespread use of BIM?

Leveraging on IT tools such as BIM is one way to raise productivity and improve process efficiency. The use of such tools will also level up the professionalism of the industry and raise competency and capability across the construction value chain.

Government and authorities who did not leverage on such tools will be missing out on a great opportunity to transform the construction industry from one that is deemed to be dangerous, dirty and demanding to one that will be seen as professional, progressive and productive.