Crowne Plaza Changi Airport. (Photo: Katmorro/Wikimedia Commons)
OUE Limited, the developer of the new Crowne Plaza Changi Airport hotel extension, will only need one month to finish the top eight storeys of the project as the rooms are merely stacked together like building blocks, reported My Paper.
The rooms, which come complete with lighting, carpeting and even bathtubs, were shipped over from a Shanghai factory to be assembled on site.
With this Prefabricated Pre-finished Volumetric Construction (PPVC) method, OUE has already installed 112 of the 252 modules.
Irene Meta, Senior Vice President of Development & Projects at OUE Limited, revealed that the PPVC method has helped the firm overcome building site constraints.
The site is small, while access is limited, with delivery traffic to the worksite allowed only from 10pm to 5am.
However, the PPVC method requires fewer vehicle trips, at just 300 compared with 1,250 for conventional building methods.
The small site has also become less of an issue since less work is needed on-site.
“So we felt that, overall, this project was very suitable for the use of PPVC,” said Meta.
Featuring 243 rooms, the 10-storey extension will add significant capacity to the existing hotel.
While it took the developer about 10 months to finish the first stage of construction – which covered the foundation to the second storey, it will only take them one month to install the individual modules for the remaining floors.
Hence, the time taken to complete the remaining eight storeys has been cut from 12 months to four months.
The PPVC method also required less manpower, down from 60 workers to 36.
National Development Minister Lawrence Wong noted that such productive technology is crucial for the future of the city-state’s construction industry.
“We cannot possibly build our future infrastructure using the old ways of relying on more and more foreign workers,” he said after visiting the site.
Meanwhile, John Keung, Chief Executive Officer of the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), hopes that the hotel extension project will serve as an example to show the industry what the PPVC method can achieve.
“We hope we can build up the expertise here, whether it’s architects or contractors or developers, to give this technology a big push,” he said.
Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
