Malaysia and Singapore, time is now to adjust and modernize the construction industry

It is now or never. The Covid-19 pandemic and its multiple lock-downs have had a terrible impact on the economy overall and especially on the construction industry in Malaysia and Singapore where the workforce is mostly made of foreign labor. These workers have been forced to go back to their home-countries and can hardly get back to their original jobs due to traveling restrictions and SOPs. This has a twofold effect.

Firstly it slowdowns projects that finally received the Governments' green-light to move forward. Not enough labor available means less actions done daily to complete the job. Projects delays mean potential penalty fees for contractors and potential losses for investors. Not enough skilled workers also mean that some jobs are given to non-skilled workers instead, and the workmanship can be badly affected eventually.

Secondly, the workers still available locally know that for the first time they have the upper-hand at the negotiation table and start to ask for better wages and benefits, which increase the projects costs for the contractors that can hardly pass the bills to their clients. So to avoid losses contractors either cut corners on quality or declare themselves in bankruptcy and leave their projects partly completed. The most notorious case is this big residential project in Singapore recently where a new main contractor had to be hired to complete the job, generating higher costs and delays for the Government. A lose-lose situation.

But let's look at the bigger picture, why have we reached that situation? Because the construction industry in Malaysia and Singapore have been addicted to cheap foreign labor for decades. Very few contractors have invested in training local workforce and in long term productivity of their teams. Sharing and adopting best practices, buying better PPE and tooling could help to reduce this dependency on cheap labor. When I go to construction sites, I still see jobs done by 3 to 5 workers that usually take a single worker in Europe. Basic PPE and tools are even not provided to the workers. Accidents on sites are not really accounted for. Let's face reality, when a worker is not fit for work, he is sent back to his country and replaced immediately.

Health and safety training sessions are a basic necessity but most importantly regular check-ups by authorities and law enforcement. Few years ago, I saw a QC officer on a high-rise construction site falling 2 floors down, breaking up his legs, being evacuated immediately while the main contractor was still proudly advertising on a billboard 658 days without accidents... How can that happen?

Adequate tooling is widely available but often left apart whereas it could easily reduce the dependency on large numbers of workers by 30-40%. Best practices and installation guidelines shared by international building materials manufacturers like us should be learnt and implemented by local contractors. These guidelines exist for a reason, not only to give us an opportunity to waive our warranty terms when not strictly followed...

At my humble level in the vinyl flooring industry, our vinyl rolls weight around 110-130kg each, in Europe we use forklifts to carry it around and mini unrolling trolleys to allow one worker install it on his own. Here I still see 3 to 5 workers breaking their backs on the same task.

Someone asked me recently to help them recruit skilled labor from China to help them do installation jobs in Singapore and compensate the current labor shortage there. Daily wages asked by the Chinese were 3 times higher than what they usually pay in Singapore. Are Chinese wages too high now or the Singaporean wages of foreign workers too low? maybe a bit of both. But this is our reality now.

We, I say we because I have been in Malaysia in the construction industry for 7 years and I love this country and my job, must adapt and modernize our industry. New tools and hardware, best practices and software like BIM, AI, etc. are there to empower local workforce and improve quality and safety standards while reducing the long term cost impact on the government and society overall. Time is now and this is maybe the most positive takeaway given to us by this pandemic.