Companies need to restructure operations accordingly, says minister
By Daryl Chin, The Straits Times, 3 Nov 2012
COMPANIES must deal with the harsh reality of tightening foreign labour laws and restructure their operations accordingly.
This advice came from Acting Minister for Manpower Tan Chuan-Jin yesterday, even as he estimated job growth in Singapore will moderate to between 1.5 and 2 per cent.
He said companies could learn from the construction sector, where condo projects such as Cube 8 are leveraging on technology to achieve substantial productivity gains.
The 36-storey Cube 8 along Thomson Road uses easy-to-install dry walls which are slightly costlier, but can be put up quickly and require only a third of the usual number of workers.
Besides using precast construction methods, the project also uses pre-fabricated bathroom units, produced off-site.
Mr Thierry Brezac, a project director for main contractor Dragages Singapore, estimates that the project will speed up construction time by a year and save up to 30 per cent in manpower.
Asked how much has been saved, he replied: "To implement these features you need to invest, so at the end you may spend more, but this could be balanced by manpower savings."
Mr Tan also lauded developer City Developments Limited for redesigning its work processes and using Building Information Modelling, a 3-D imaging technology, to reduce errors in construction, which has in turn created a knock-on effect for others.
Responding to labour chief Lim Swee Say's remarks on Thursday on how job growth will slow, Mr Tan said this was "not new".
"Certainly, even in the economic restructuring committee, we've talked about how we can't continue with labour growth at that rate," he said.
"Regardless of how the economy grows, the tightening is something that we will maintain. We will calibrate on whether we need to tighten further, but certainly we are not going to go backwards," he said.
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Being Productive -The Manpower Blog
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