Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the Ground-Breaking Ceremony for Paya Lebar Green on 1 Dec 2022
Dec 1, 2022
I am delighted to join you for the ground-breaking ceremony of the Paya Lebar Green, which will be the new headquarters for Certis – a very important project and partnership.
We are here today at the heart of the Paya Lebar Central. Over the years, this precinct has transformed into an attractive and accessible location for businesses, as well as a lively and vibrant hub for the community. This is the result of long-term planning – we have envisaged the development of Paya Lebar Central as a commercial centre at the fringe of the city since the Masterplan in 2008.
The new Paya Lebar Green will add to the vibrancy of Paya Lebar Central, by providing more opportunities for jobs, businesses, and create more public spaces for the area. For example, Certis and Lendlease will be constructing a new park over the existing Geylang River, creating more communal space not just for their tenants, but also for the larger community.
The first time I had a close interaction with Lendlease was at Paya Lebar Quarter. We [MND] were working on the Industry Transformation Map for construction, and being quite new to construction, I asked my colleagues: “Can you bring me to some work sites where firms that are at the forefront – at the cutting edge of technology, digitalisation, and construction coordination – are able to demonstrate the future today?”
This was a couple of years ago and one of the places I visited was Paya Lebar Quarter, which was still under construction. If you have not been there, I strongly recommend you to go there and ask the project managers from Lendlease to take you through the construction process. You will then understand why this partnership between one of our leading firms in Singapore, Certis, and an Australian firm that has become very homegrown – being one of the first foreign firms that helped to build homes for HDB many decades ago – is significant. This partnership brings two cultures together, and the product is bigger than the sum of its parts.
Paya Lebar Green – A Showcase of Built Environment Transformation
As most of you would know, we have launched the refreshed Built Environment Industry Transformation Map, or BE ITM, some months ago. It is refreshed from a previous roadmap that we established a few years ago.
The ITM sets out our ambition and plans to transform the way we build. In Singapore, we are so land-scarce and how we build is critical; how we design, conceptualise, do the shop floor drawings, pull out the items that you can do pre-casting and pre-fabrication for, the way you run the building as the operator of the building but also managing a group of tenants for some buildings who are aligned with you, and how you maintain the buildings.
That is the plan, from conceptualisation all the way to construction and then how you operate and run the building for its lifespan. And how do we plan to do it? First, what we strive to do is to foster stronger collaboration among our stakeholders. There must be strong alignment from the planning and design stages, to make sure that things are done right, at the very beginning between the owner and developer – in this case, Certis – together with the main builder – in this case, Lendlease.
Next, we want to improve the construction processes, to make them more productive and sustainable than they are today. Last but not least, we want to make use of smart technologies and digitalisation to boost productivity and efficiency in the downstream operations and maintenance of buildings.
But that is just process and technology. They are very critical tools, but ultimately, it is the mindset, the culture, the alignment, and the people who want to make use of these tools that will have the culture of collaboration across firms working together as one team and delivering a good product through an efficient, productive, and effective process.
Paya Lebar Green is a good example of what we aim to achieve under the refreshed ITM. I hope that the processes over the next few years, as this building gets built and operated, will embody all these aspirations and more.
Right from the onset of this project, Certis, Lendlease and other stakeholders came together to set ambitious goals for Paya Lebar Green. For example, you decided that the development should attain the BCA Green Mark Platinum Super Low Energy certification.
Since then, your teams have leveraged digital technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) to refine the building designs to incorporate various green features. These include the use of solar photovoltaic cells, vertical greenery, and high efficiency chiller plants, amongst many other sustainable solutions.
I am also glad to hear that you are putting your people and tenants at the center of your design for Paya Lebar Green. You have made workplace health and well-being one of the key priorities for the development, by including features, such as naturally-ventilated spaces and facilities such as bicycle parking spaces and shower facilities to promote active mobility – very welcome in our humid and warm climate.
Concerted effort has also been made to ensure that Paya Lebar Green will be built in a productive and efficient manner, and in a green and sustainable way. For example, Lendlease and its partners, such as Hexacon Construction and other consultants, will be adopting productive technologies such as prefabricated Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) systems.
You also plan to adopt innovative sustainable construction practices to reduce waste and energy consumption. These include the use of high-capacity battery systems to power heavy construction equipment, a technology that is still quite nascent in Singapore and we want to learn more from you. This will remove the need for traditional diesel generators, significantly eliminating the emission of carbon and hazardous fumes during the construction phase, so pushing the boundaries. Let us learn along the way together.
Finally, as a leading Facilities Management (FM) specialist, Certis has taken the initiative to deploy smart technologies, and to integrate FM services for even greater efficiency. Certis will leverage its Mozart Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform, to monitor building performance in real time using smart sensors. You will also be able to seamlessly coordinate numerous FM services, such as security and air-con maintenance, across the entire building.
Strong Partnership Across the Value Chain
The strong partnership between Certis, Lendlease, Hexacon and our BE professionals is essential for the success of these ambitious initiatives.
I understand that the teams have been working tirelessly on the project – from conceptualising the smart and green features, to implementing systems that are interoperable, and even the minute details such as where to place the sensors and how to provide access to maintain them.
It is this spirit of collaboration across the entire value chain, across a very large group of people from different firms, between your developers, engineers, architects, builders, and facilities managers, that we need to encourage more widely, to transform the way we build in Singapore.
Moving forward, we hope to encourage more developers to partner their value chain partners to strengthen working relationships and capabilities over all your projects, and drive greater outcomes by working together.
Conclusion
As our buildings grow and age, we have to continue to find inventive ways to redevelop our buildings in line with evolving constraints, needs and aspirations.
Paya Lebar Green is set to do very well in this regard and to be a game changer. As the headquarters for Certis over the past 36 years, I look forward to seeing Certis making Paya Lebar Green your home for many more.
Congratulations and I look forward to an exciting future together.