SINGAPORE – Building firms Ong&Ong and Woh Hup, as well as two projects, Paya Lebar Quarter and the Kallang Polyclinic and Long Term Care Facility, have received top accolades at the inaugural Integrated Digital Delivery (IDD) Awards of the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), announced on Wednesday (Sept 8).

The awards recognise those who have applied digital technologies across various stages of a building project to achieve increased productivity and resiliency.

Awards are grouped into two categories – firm and project – and are given out in three tiers: platinum, gold plus and gold.

Ong&Ong, which took home a platinum award, invested in a cloud-based solution that allowed its employees to work remotely.

The firm also set up a digital technology department, which helped to drive digitalisation across its projects and conduct internal training programmes for staff.

To further optimise its workflow, an in-house software development team was formed to develop building modelling tools and customisation capabilities.

Mr Ashvinkumar Kantilal, group chief executive for architecture at Ong&Ong, said that since adopting more automation tools, tapping augmented and virtual reality solutions, and moving its work to cloud platforms, “the inter-connectivity within the group became seamless”.

“This investment has helped us to be better prepared and equipped to navigate the Covid-19 impact on our business and allowed us to continue to serve our clients and look after the projects with minimal disruption,” he said.

The other platinum award winner in the firm category, Woh Hup, was recognised for its achievements in using digital tools for large-scale and complex projects such as Jewel Changi Airport and the upcoming Punggol Digital District.

In its statement, BCA said Woh Hup had taken the lead in digitalisation not only within the firm, but also brought on board supply chain partners.

For instance, the firm offers in-house digitalisation training programmes for subcontractors.

Digitalisation helped the firm to cut down time needed for modelling efforts, replaced manual processes on site and helped to manage defects more efficiently, said BCA.

In the project category, the Kallang Polyclinic and Long-Term Care Facility was recognised for the use of digital tools to manage the design, scheduling and projection of pre-fabricated modules.

Those working on the project could also participate in meetings in a 3D virtual environment thanks to virtual reality applications, which reduced the need for physical meetings.

Meanwhile, the other platinum project, Paya Lebar Quarter, received praise for its smart facility management platform, which gives facility managers an overview of total building performance using artificial intelligence and data analytics.

The platform helped to enhance overall operational efficiency and reduce cost in the project’s first year of operations, resulting in energy savings of up to 30 per cent, said the BCA.

BCA chief executive Kelvin Wong said: “The benefits are clear – many projects which implemented IDD have reported increased time, cost, manpower and resource savings. We expect more of such results in the future, given the increasing number of firms and projects which are embracing IDD.

“This is not surprising as IDD allows entire project teams to better collaborate and paves the way for deeper cross-discipline interactions that bring the earlier said benefits. Experience in IDD adds a lot of value to an individual working in the built environment sector and we foresee the demand for IDD job roles to grow in the next few years.”

A total of 17 firms and projects won the awards across the three tiers.

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