In view of the current and impending amount of construction projects awarded, the local construction industry is increasingly being hampered by severe constraints in all aspects of construction resources from material to manpower.

The following list represents some of the most exigent challenges faced by many new contractors in the area of manpower resource constraints.

Current Market Challenges to New Market Entrants

1. Current MOM dependency ratio of 1 Singaporean : 7 foreign workers. This employment requirement for foreign workers represent a great challenge to new contractors when employing foreign workers. Firms will be required to have a construction-related CPF account in place and must technically be in operation for 3 calendar months before it is allowed to start recruiting foreign workers. New contractor entrants might not have the luxury of time when the urgent need for the construction workers arises.
   
   
2. New entrants will also need to be either BCA or SLOTS certified before they are allowed to recruit foreign construction workers. This certification usually takes a couple of months to process.
   
   
3. One-year work permits of foreign workers. New entrants whose projects that last less than a year often have trouble assigning jobs for their workers upon the completion of the project. Some even have problems when repatriating the workers whom they no longer require. This represents additional costs to the contractor as they are liable for the workers pay even if there are no available jobs.
   
   
4. Lack of accommodation resources. Due to the unusually large influx of foreign workers servicing the marine, process, manufacturing and construction industries, there is currently a severe shortage of MOM-approved dormitories for these foreign workers island-wide. Opportunistic profiteering by dormitory operators in view of the shortage exists.
   
   
5. Lack of transportation resources. Currently there is also a severe shortage of transportation resources (drivers and vehicles) ferrying the workers to and from the respective job sites.
   
   
6. Lack of highly skilled workers. Currently most of the foreign workers available are only trained in one specific skill, thus they are unable to multi-task to improve productivity.
   
   

We have long recognized all these challenges to our clients. As such we are glad to be given the opportunity to showcase our organizational capabilities to meet these challenges.

1. We have a sizable workforce of about 2000 foreign workers at the immediate disposal of our clients. In addition to that, we have a healthy on-going MOM dependency ratio that allows us to recruit and employ another additional 300 workers immediately when the situation arises.
   
   
2. We are BCA certified, thus we are able to recruit foreign workers. In addition, we are also ISO 9000-2000 certified, OHSAS (Occupational Health & Safety Assessment Series) certified and Case Trust certified. These certifications ensure that we have the capabilities to deliver a high level of service standard to all our clients.
   
   
3. We have a long list of clients with whom we can deploy the surplus workers when there is a lull in the construction activities for our clients. We have in place an efficient system whereby surplus workers from one particular site can be re-deployed to another site without contravening any existing rules and regulations. This gives our clients added flexibility, efficiency and cost-savings when deploying the workers to only the sites requiring the workers. This also solves the problem of surplus workers during lull periods.
   
   
4. We provide one stop comprehensive service for recruitment process from workers selection to final delivery of workers to clients' site.
   
   
5. We have signed long-term tenancy contracts with 3 major MOM-approved dormitory operators in the Central, Northern and Eastern parts of the island. This allows us to lock in our accommodation costs and prevents us from becoming victim to opportunistic dormitory operators who seek to profit from the accommodation shortages by constantly adjusting their rates upwards. We can thus provide a higher level of certainty in terms of accommodation charges to our all our respective clients. Currently, we have up to 2500 to 3000 bed spaces available.
   
   
6. We have a large operational fleet of construction vehicles and qualified drivers to transport all our workers to and from their respective work sites on a daily basis. We have extra capacity to even to fit our transport routine to cater to our clients' special and impromptu needs when they may need to execute last minutes requests based on site requirements.
   
   
7. Most of our workers are multi-skilled. In additional to one standard CITI skill trade certification, we actively send our workers for training in other trades like welding, scaffolding, plastering, signalling & rigging, drivers, crane operators, excavator operators etc. This allows our clients to more flexibility and productivity when deploying the workers.
   
   
8. Long and established track record. We have been serving the local and regional labour markets since 1998.
   
   
9. Foreman skills & certification include Safety Supervisors, Lifting Supervisors, scaffold supervisors, class 3 drivers' license and class 4 drivers' license.