At Copen Grand EC, the facades of all residential blocks are maintainable via gondolas, and rain cover overhang reduces rain exposure at lift lobbies. (Image: BCA)
Demand for building maintenance works continues to increase as Singapore’s building stock grows and ages. The manpower available to maintain buildings also continues to shrink.
To ensure that buildings remain well-maintained over time, the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) has been advocating for the built environment sector to factor longer-term maintenance considerations into the design process from the start.
This is known as Design for Maintainability (DfM). With it, buildings will be easier and more cost-effective to maintain through their operational phase.
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Developers, building owners and tenants can expect to benefit from “substantial” maintenance cost and manpower savings over a building’s life cycle if DfM features are incorporated early in the design process. Architectural decisions can also give the biggest productivity boost.
That is according to preliminary findings from a study by BCA and Surbana Jurong (SJ Group), released on July 22.
“For too long, maintenance has been treated as someone else’s problem, to be addressed only after the building is handed over,” said Ang Kian Seng, group director of environment sustainability at BCA.
“This study shows that designing for maintainability is not a cost burden, but a sound investment,” he added.
The additional cost of incorporating DfM for the commercial buildings ranged from 0.6% to 1.5% of total construction cost, and was just 0.2% for the residential project.
To quantify the benefits of DfM, they studied four developments in Singapore: two existing commercial buildings, a new commercial development, and a new residential development.
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Developments in the study comprise Ascent from CapitaLand Development, SJ Campus from SJ Group, the recently opened Shaw Tower from Shaw Towers Realty with Lendlease as project and development manager, and the Copen Grand executive condo (EC) by City Developments and Sunway MCL.
Adopting DfM can yield annual operational savings and deliver net positive returns after “relatively short” payback periods, the findings showed.
Potential annual operational savings ranged from $310,000 to $950,000 across the three commercial buildings assessed — Ascent, SJ Campus and Shaw Tower — the findings showed. Most of the DfM measures there also achieved a payback period of less than six years.
As for the residential project, Copen Grand EC in Tengah, potential annual operational savings can go up to $110,000, with the majority of DfM measures achieving payback within five years.
For example, if dedicated access is not built into the design, maintenance workers servicing the fan and basin at the top of a cooling tower will need to use temporary scaffolding, which is costly and time-consuming.
But by incorporating a cat ladder into the design, maintenance teams can have safer and direct access to the cooling tower. In the case of Shaw Tower, this “straightforward” design decision can generate potential life-cycle savings of over $750,000, with a payback period of just three years, BCA said in the July 22 announcement.
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Given that cooling towers have a typical lifespan of 15 years, being able to recover the investment in three years would mean net positive returns thereafter for the next 12 years, BCA added.
Besides, there can be meaningful productivity gains from adopting DfM. All DfM features studied helped reduce annual maintenance man-days — many achieved reductions of more than 60%.
The largest productivity gains came from architectural decisions such as choices about design specifications, floor materials, ceiling types and facade access.
“We encourage developers, designers and building owners to embrace DfM and the Green Mark Mt Badge, as we shift from building for completion to building for long-term performance,” said BCA’s Ang.
BCA and SJ Group will work with trade associations and chambers in the built environment sector to hold a series of engagements with architects, engineers, developers and facilities management practitioners, to share the study’s findings and gather industry feedback.
In the same announcement, BCA also noted that adoption of CORENET X — a one-stop digital platform for approval of building works — will be mandated for certain projects.
From Oct 1, 2026, all new projects with a gross floor area (GFA) of 5,000 sq m (53,820 sq ft) and above will be required to make submissions via the platform.
It will no longer be mandatory for projects with GFA below 5,000 sq m to make submissions via the CORENET X gateway processes.
Ongoing projects on CORENET 2.0 and projects with GFA below 5,000 sq m can continue to use CORENET 2.0 to make submissions for now.
These changes come after a review of CORENET X, which had found that the platform’s benefits are more significant for larger and more complex projects, which usually involve more agencies and regulatory submissions.
“Early coordination through CORENET X helps these projects surface and resolve issues earlier, reducing downstream delays,” BCA said.
For smaller projects, which generally involve fewer agencies and are often undertaken by smaller firms with more limited manpower resources, the costs of mandatory adoption may outweigh the benefits, according to BCA.
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