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REFORMING THE REGULATORY SYSTEM FOR
CONSTRUCTION PERMITS

T he Singapore Government envisions a need to transform the building and construc-
tion industry through the Construction 21 Blueprint and a strategic vision to become
a “World Class Builder in the Knowledge Age”. The increased use of IT is critical for
this government to realize its vision, primarily because of the symbiotic relationship
between technology and knowledge. Clearly, in a knowledge-based industry, organizations must
leverage technologies as a means to improve productivity, reduce costs and enhance the qual-
ity of products and services. Government efforts have to focus on developing a set of IT infra-
structure projects to provide businesses and other organizations with the means to streamline
business processes and workflow, and maximize the use of information to gain and sustain their
competitive advantage.
The CORENET project (COnstruction and Real Estate NETwork) has come a long way, since
its launch in 1995, to become a major IT initiative. Led by the Ministry of National Development
and driven by the Building and Construction Authority with the purpose of re-engineering the
business processes of the building and construction industry to achieve great improvements
in turnaround time, productivity and quality. CORENET revolves around developing IT sys-
tems and key infrastructure to integrate the four major processes of a building project life cycle,
namely, design, procurement, build, and maintenance. One of the goals of CORENET is to imple-
ment an appropriate IT infrastructure to facilitate participants of building projects, including
the planning authorities, to exchange information seamlessly and speedily. In essence, putting
in place a government-to-business (G2B) infrastructure enables businesses to make electronic
building plan submissions for obtaining approvals and permits from the 16 government authori-
ties across eight ministries that regulate activities of the industry. The internet-based system can
handle project-related documents for the whole project life cycle, from processing of building
plans and documents related to the issuance of development planning approvals, building plans
approval, structural plans approvals, temporary occupation permits, fire safety certificates and
certificates of statutory completion.
Traditionally, the whole construction process comprises four distinct sequential stages. They
are design, tender documentation and selection, construction, and handover and maintenance.
In the first stage, the key activities of design consist of developing concept and schematic designs,
and obtaining planning approvals. As planning approvals are granted by the various regulatory
bodies, the building owner
needs to submit the building
plans through the appointed
design consultant (or the
Qualified Person) to these
bodies separately to apply
for the approvals. The com-
plex process of submitting the
application, checking against
planning requirements, eval-
uating the proposal, re-sub-
mission for non-compliance
and issuing approval involves
many parties and uses differ-
ent channels of communica-
tion. In the traditional (or old)
process, the ‘Qualified Person’
has to make multiple submis-
sions of plans, documents and © leungchopan/Shutterstock
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