Recommendation Recommendation
a) Review the joint list of project submissions for
architects and engineers as agreed by the two
professional boards, Board of Architects and
Board of Engineers, providing clear lines of
authority and responsibility between architects
and engineers in respect of designs involving
structural elements. a) Selection of contractor for complex works
should be based strictly on the contractor’s
experience, support of skilled technical staff
and financial standing.
b) PEs must have a minimum number of years
of relevant experience (e.g. in engineering
consultancy services) before being allowed to
act as a Submitting Person for structural plans
to the Local Authority.
- select consultant based on Quality
Based Selection (QBS) process such as
International Federation of Consulting
Engineers’ (FIDIC) guidelines to ensure that
only competent consultants with relevant
experience are selected.
- Design of complex structures or
geotechnical works must be vetted by
accredited checkers registered with BEM.
c) Review UBBL to require submission of
structural plans to be accompanied by a
soil investigation and geotechnical report by
PEs with relevant geotechnical engineering
experience for works in a geotechnical setting.
d) Take stern action against any PEs who practice
beyond the field of engineering that they are
competent in.
Procurement Process Stage
b) Costing should be included into the
‘Preliminaries -’ of the contract for the cost
of ensuring safety and complying with the
provisions of the Occupational and Safety Act
514 (OSHA), Factory and Machinery, Act 139
and the Rules on requirements on Site Safety
Supervisors under Factories and Machinery
(Building Operators and Works of Engineering
Construction) (Safety) 1986.
Construction Stage
a) Incompetent Clerk of Works as a Site
Supervisor or Inspector of Works
A Clerk of Works (COW) was formerly engaged
for construction work to act on behalf of either
the consultant or contractor. There were several
cases of failures that were attributed to the
incompetency of supervisors. CIDB now registers
them as Site Supervisor (SS) and BEM registers
them as Inspector of Works (IOW). Since engineers
cannot be on site full time for most projects, it is
therefore important that an SS or IOW possesses
the right competency to undertake the task to
ensure structures are constructed according to
plans and engineering principles.
Some developers second their office staff who
might not be qualified to act as an IOW nor have
sufficient time for site supervision.
a) Incompetent and inexperienced contractors
b) Insufficient Site Supervisors
As contractors are the persons who actually carry
out the construction works, it is important that
they are qualified to handle the job depending on
its complexity. There are prevailing requirements
for the registration of contractors depending on
their classification by CIDB. However, in practice,
many contractors do not seem to possess the
necessary qualifications and experience as
evident by the number of structural failures due
to contractor negligence since the consulting
engineer cannot be on site full time.
It is common for Government projects to be
supervised by a skeleton strength of SSs. The case
of structural failures at SM Majidee Johor Bahru
in 1988 points to the lack of supervision where a
technician had to supervise four schools under the
‘Projek Segara‘ scheme and concreting was allowed
at night. During the investigation by JKR HQ, for a
similar project across the Causeway, a Jurong Town
Corporation housing flats in Jurong had allocated
four technicians for a single project.
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