Singapore project biggest yet for Fletcher Construction

Press, 14 December 1983, Page 37

Singapore project biggest yet for Fletcher Construction

Handfuls of Chinese joss sticks smoulder outside the Fletcher Construction site office in Singapore. The joss seems to be working. In a joint venture with a Singapore firm, Lum Chang Building Contractors, Fletcher’s is well on the way with its largest building project anywhere, a SNZIOO million hospital for the Singapore Government. Work on the 485-bed hospital is well up to schedule. The completion date is Sep-

tember, 1984. Work began in September, 1981. The new hospital — Kent Ridge — is alongside Singapore University’s new science buildings and will be used for university teaching as well as health care. “Kent Ridge was our first joint venture with Lum Chang,” said Mr Maurice Clark. Mr Clark is SouthEast Asia regional manager for the Fletcher Construction Company, .Overseas Division.

Mr Clark opened the Fletcher Singapore office at the end of 1980 before the firm had been successful with a tender in Singapore. Since then the hospital job, in a 70 per cent-30 per cent joint venture with Lum Chang, has been the firm’s biggest achievement.

“Construction work in Singapore is very competitive,” said Mr Clark. “Very few other Western firms bother to try. As work has dried up in the Middle East, Japanese and South Korean firms have been pulling back to Singapore. They don’t like to shed labour. To keep their teams together

they tender at cost for some jobs.”

As well as the hospital, Fletcher-Lum Chang has built a new computer centre for Singapore Airlines, close to the terminal building at Singapore’s new Changi Airport. That was a SNZ2S million job. The joint venture has also built a new cold store for the New Zealand Dairy Board and is working on extensions worth $1 million for the New Zealand High Commission in Singapore. All these jobs have been won in open tender.

As well, Fletchers have a SNZ6O million project under way in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. This is a circular, futuristic building for the Muslim LUTH organisation, a religious group that helps Muslims save for pilgrimages to Mecca. To service the construction job a new regional office has been opened in Kuala Lumpur and a joint venture formed with a Malaysian firm.

Mr Clark describes Fletchers as still “very small” in South-East Asia. “In the last year alone we have tendered unsuccessfully for about SNZSOO million worth of work. We have several more tenders in the pipeline, but it is hard for Western firms to break in here. Without a local partner such as Lum Chang it would be almost impossible.

“Everything here seems to take twice as long,” said Mr Clark; “at least in the stages of getting work under way. Once started, however, projects run fairly smoothly.

“We have no unions, no strikes, and no grievances. Construction workers are in very short supply here. If they don’t like what we pay and how we treat them, they go and do better some-

where else,” said the project manager, Mr Kees Pynappel.

The joint venture has brought in some of its workers from Thailand. In all, about 600 people are engaged on the project, 100 of them directly by Fletcher-Lum Chang. Supervising the project is a small group of expatriate New Zealanders, and several Singaporeans, two of them graduates from New Zealand universities. One, the electrical co-ordinator, Mr P. Y. Lim, is a graduate of the University of Canterbury.

Mr Clark said New Zealand companies sometimes had difficulty in persuading

New Zealanders to come to Singapore to work. In addition, working with Chinese required a different attitude to that adopted when dealing with Western businessmen.

“We are accustomed to contractual arrangements. The Chinese want domination. Also, contracting has been a very low status occupation among Chinese, although that is changing as the Singapore Government’s Urban Redevelopment Authority rebuilds the city.”

However, once something was agreed, the Chinese worked on a system of trust, They could be relied on to

keep their word, once it was clearly given, he said.

Mr Clark sees joint-ven-ture construction work in Singapore as a way to export New Zealand’s technical and management skills. Jobs needed to be done as local operations, but with New Zealand management always on hand. Little could be achieved by trying to operate in Singapore from a New Zealand base — an opinion confirmed by many New Zealand firms with businesses in Singapore.

In the new hospital, at the suggestion of Fletcher’s, a system of pre-stressed, precast flooring, commonly

used in New Zealand, has been introduced to Singapore. The flooring is being made on the site. The outside of the new hospital will be clad in 75 million mosaic tiles, imported from South Korea. Tiles are commonly used in Singapore to stop mould forming on exposed concrete.

Hot water for the hospital will come from solar power. Singapore has to import all its fuel for electricity generation and constantly seeks ways to conserve energy.

A poster on the site exhorts the workers: “Come On Singapore,” and under a blazing sun the joss sticks smoulder on.

By Naylor Hillary, who recently visited Singapore with the assistance of Singapore Airlines.