Refurbishment of public housing - The Singapore experience

At present, the majority of the population of Singapore is housed in blocks of flats built by a government body, the Housing and Development Board. 85% of the people of Singapore reside in public housing. Most of these government-built flats are low in cost and were built more than twenty-five years ago. A major refurbishment programme, which upgrades the older flats, is now underway. This refurbishment programme is a major challenge to the building team in that all construction works are carried out while the flats are occupied. Both the design and the execution of the construction works must be seamlessly coordinated. Traditional project management techniques do not apply in a refurbishment such as this. As a result, innovative construction techniques have to be employed to ensure the safety of and to minimise disruption to the residents. The successful execution of the massive refurbishment projects is attributable to these innovative techniques. The critical success factors have been identified through the study of the earlier batches of refurbishment projects. Useful management criteria are developed to serve as guiding principles for future refurbishment projects, and these can be useful because they ensure the smooth completion of future projects with ultimate savings of time and money.