Common Design Standards to Guide All Statutory Boards for Public Housing Construction

Miss Cheryl Chan Wei Ling asked the Minister for National Development whether there are plans to implement changes in designs and standards across the different Statutory Boards by standardising the design for common use parts especially for concrete panels in public housing.

Mr Desmond Lee: The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) encourages the use of standardised designs through the Buildability Framework to improve construction productivity. Currently, all projects with Gross Floor Area of 5,000 sqm and above are required to meet a minimum buildable design score for the approval of their building plans.

BCA also works with agencies to encourage them to adopt standardised designs of building components, where possible. For example, for public housing projects, HDB seeks to strike a balance between standardising common components for better cost effectiveness, and enabling some variation in design to give a unique identity and character to each project. This is done by adopting standardised designs for components such as water tanks and refuse chutes, or partially standardised designs for components such as walls and slabs which can be easily adopted across different projects with minor modifications. To enable projects to have their own unique identity, HDB allows the designs of architectural facade precast panels across projects to be varied, but standardises the components within each individual project so as to achieve economies of scale. HDB will continue to regularly review standardisation and design guidelines to keep pace with industry trends and changing expectations of stakeholders.