Speech by Minister Indranee Rajah at the Opening Ceremony of the China-ASEAN Building Cooperation And Development Forum

Nov 25, 2022

TRANSCRIPT OF ADDRESS BY SECOND MINISTER FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, MS INDRANEE RAJAH, AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE CHINA-ASEAN BUILDING COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT FORUM AND 2022 CHINA-ASEAN BUILDING AND HIGH QUALITY LIVING ENVIRONMENT EXPO, NANNING, GUANGXI ZHUANG AUTONOMOUS REGION, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, 25 NOVEMBER 2022, 9:30AM

Congratulations on the opening of the inaugural China-ASEAN Building Cooperation and Development Forum and the 2022 China-ASEAN Building and High-Quality Living Environment Expo.

The theme of today’s forum is “Sharing New RCEP opportunities and Creating a New Future for the Building Industry”. This is an excellent opportunity for like-minded partners, businesses, and experts to exchange ideas on promoting the building industry, and exploring international cooperation towards important goals such as low-carbon development.

Future-Ready Building Industry to support Future-Ready Built Environment

While we come from different cities, all of us are grappling with similar, big challenges. First, climate change. We have to ensure that our built environment is climate resilient and do our part to shrink our cities’ carbon footprint. Second, several cities are grappling with an ageing population. This means that we need to be able to design, build, and maintain our cities with a more constrained workforce, while supporting the changing needs of an ageing population. Third, COVID reminds us that a pandemic can strike very quickly, and we need to better design our built environment, with public health in mind.

In Singapore, the Ministry of National Development works very closely with our building industry partners, to transform how we design, build, and maintain our built environment.

a) First, we are promoting the use of integrated digital delivery in construction projects. By leveraging on building information systems, we hope that the design, construction, and maintenance of buildings can be more streamlined. An important part is the harmonisation of data standards used by architects, builders, and owners so that they can exchange building information more easily and collaborate digitally to optimise building design for downstream construction and maintenance, across a building’s lifecycle.

b) Second, we will promote the adoption of more advanced technologies such as robotics and automation in construction processes. This includes the production of precast and prefabricated prefinished volumetric construction modules. These are developed off-site and then assembled on-site, to deliver greater manpower savings and achieve even higher productivity.

c) Third, we continue to encourage the greening of our buildings. Besides setting higher sustainability requirements, we are also driving the adoption of Super Low Energy standards and pushing the boundaries of research and innovation in energy-efficient technologies to reduce operational carbon. We are also encouraging the adoption of sustainable construction methods and materials to reduce embodied carbon.

d) Fourth, in developing new public housing estates in Singapore, we use a Design for Life approach. This is a resident-centred approach to planning and designing estates and homes around residents’ physical, mental and social needs. This will include improving facilities for active living, harnessing the intrinsic benefits of nature and providing more diverse communal spaces. We will also tap on sensors and smart applications to help the estates and residents conserve water and electricity, and help them to lead a more sustainable lifestyle.

Achieving more through regional collaboration

No city has a monopoly of ideas. As these challenges are common, it will be a win-win for cities to share best practices in designing and building a quality living environment that is resilient yet sustainable.

A positive example of such a collaboration is the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City project. After 14 years of development, the Eco-City has transformed from barren land to a liveable and endearing home for its 130,000 residents. The Eco-City is also a Green Building Demonstration Base, where both countries jointly developed a green building code for the Eco-City, by adapting the higher of our national standards and adapting it for local conditions. This has helped the Eco-City to achieve 100 percent green buildings.

The Eco-City has also been piloting smart technologies such as City Information Modelling and smart city operations centre, and autonomous public buses to support better upstream planning, improve government and municipal services, and making the Eco-City more inclusive for its residents, businesses, and visitors.

Conclusion

The Forum and Expo today is yet another excellent platform for international cooperation. I am sure that by working together, we can create even more opportunities and reshape the future of the building industry.

I wish everyone a fruitful exchange at the Forum and the Expo, and I wish the Forum and Expo every success. Thank you!