Speech by Minister Khaw Boon Wan at the 5th Joint Forum on Infrastructure Maintenance

Protection Against Flood Risk

1.     Mr Tan Gee Paw started this forum. It has been so useful that in two years, we have met four or five times. Sometimes, it is incident-driven, as is today's. Sometimes, it is preventive, where we try to share some best practices.

2.     The Oct 7 flooding incident will be remembered for a long time; it better be. As PM put it: it should not have happened, but now that it has happened, let us learn the right lessons from it. Mr Tan Gee Paw suggested this morning's theme for precisely the same reason: that is to remind each other, reflect on it, learn best practices, and make sure nothing like that happens again.

3.     The engineering design is straight forward. But regular maintenance, and periodic audits, checks, and testing make the world of difference for whether the anti-flooding mechanism will work as designed. The Oct 7 incident throws up other issues of HR policy, staff rotation, staff supervision, staff engagement and staff motivation. Oct 7 was not a failure of engineering; it was a failure of organisational management at SMRT. SMRT will learn from it and emerge stronger. I have full confidence in Chairman Seah Moon Ming and his team.

4.     SMRT is top priority for Seah Moon Ming, as national duty calls. Let us all help to render full and public support, not just for Seah Moon Ming, but also for his management, and the rank and file at SMRT. That would make his job much easier, and raise the morale of everyone down the line. Remember Seah Moon Ming is not Superman; none of us are. While we are keenly aware of various gaps in SMRT that still are not yet addressed, do appreciate the many tireless and necessary jobs that have already been done and the risks avoided. Let us also give credit to our workers and our contractors for handling our renewal projects well. Their job is however not yet finished, as I repeated several times before. Out of six major renewals, two are done, four more to go, and they are also major ones, especially power supply. That is why we need more engineering hours to speed up the work. I'm grateful for Singaporeans' and commuters' understanding.

5.     Beware too that SMRT may experience other incidents along the way as we try to catch up in short order on what could and should have been done years ago. The hardest role is always the men and officers fighting in the trenches. The burden on their shoulders is the heaviest. And their families are also affected if they see that their loved ones are being screamed at, or castigated. The least that we can do is to provide moral support. We have no perfect men or women, only normal men and women that we should try to use to their strengths, and to find solutions to mitigate and overcome their weaknesses. Fortunately, the pride in SMRT still lurks among the rank and file. And we can build on that. They need our full support above all else, so that they have the time and the space, and the encouragement, for them to put in their very best.

6.     Meanwhile, remember too that Oct 7 could have happened to other organisations; and it may take other forms. With his vast experience in PUB, Mr Tan Gee Paw painted several dark scenarios for our reference. His email to PUB and LTA on Nov 12 last month is worth reading, and I'll just read extracts of it. I quote:

In Taipei where they have to deal with typhoons, their tunnel portals are protected with sluice gates to completely seal the tunnels against flooding, and of course all rail services are suspended during typhoons. We may never experience typhoons but we will experience heavier rainfall periods, as the typhoon belt shifts southwards and we sit at the periphery of these typhoons. 

Perhaps we should at least build in the civil infrastructure to accommodate these sluice gates for our new tunnels, leaving out the M&E equipment and the gates themselves. Our successors in office who may have to deal with near-typhoon rain conditions decades later will be most grateful to us as retrofitting the Civil works for sluice gates is near impossible for a live line.

Finally, there is a need for us to institutionalise all these for the benefit of our successors in office for the next generations, rather than risk losing such experience. Perhaps we should form a LTA-PUB Standing Committee on Flood Prevention of Tunnels that could meet six monthly initially to keep track of progress and take up new developments in tunnel flood prevention.”

7.     These are very valuable advice and practical suggestions. As we discuss among ourselves later, please bear these points in mind, so that we can all walk out of this Forum mindful of our heavy responsibilities to the safety of our children and our grandchildren.

8.     Singapore is not short of iconic world wonders, the latest addition and our great pride is Terminal 4. These are good and important for our pride and confidence. But behind all these iconic structures, do spare a thought for the proper maintenance of our infrastructure, the workers working in the trenches, in the middle of the night and the early hours, upon their shoulders and hard labour, we derive the luxury of a peaceful sleep. So do invest in them, support them, thank them, sayang them, treat them with respect!

9.     Every time I visit hospitals - when I used to run hospitals - the same thing when I took over this job, one of the first things I would do is visit staff lounges. SMRT staff know this well. I visit their toilets - are they in good condition? Recently I sent an email to Mr Liew Mun Leong, Chairman CAG. The highest standard of public toilet maintenance is in our airports; they are our pride. All our toilets, whether public or private, should be like that.

10.    But, as always, we are all engineers. We know that while engineering seems straightforward, engineering encompasses total concepts of reliability, availability, maintainability. When it comes to looking ahead to design for contingencies, a good design is one that is easy to operate, easy to run, easy to maintain, that is almost failsafe or failsafe, so that nothing wrong should happen.

11.    This (Environment Building) is a beautiful building, designed by good engineers. It is always a pleasure coming here, whether you drive, you walk, you take public transport. It is designed with end users in mind, and that should be the way.

12.    Recently I gave a speech called “The Tale of Two MRT Lines”, comparing our oldest line - North South Line, built 30 years ago - and our newest line: vast differences! Yes we were short on funds then, I won't say we cut corners, but we were tight. Our new design, with the experience of 30 years, is a lot better. Still, not perfect. You all have taken MRTs and subways elsewhere. And if you pay some attention, you know that people design for all kinds of contingencies - backups - because you know this is a complicated engineering piece of work, and it will fail sometimes, hopefully rarely. But it will fail. We're not gods. The human body, when I experienced my own personal health problems, I always marvelled, lying in bed in hospitals, how wonderful our creators are - our heart constantly working for hours and hours, until you drop dead.

13.    We try to make engineering systems as flawless as that, but it is almost impossible. But that doesn't mean we should not try. Always make sure that when we design something, the design is to the best of ability. Think about all the possible contingencies and try to avoid them, whether it is hardware or whether it is writing a software, like in the re-signalling project that we went through. With thoroughness, some of the problems could have been avoided. And this is what we as good engineers should do, as a total systems approach. Remember a good engineering design includes not just from the hardware angle but from people's angle, the users angle.

14.    Today, staff toilets at stations are several levels below where the staff are stationed. So inconvenient! I still remember when I was involved with the design of several new public hospitals in Singapore. My first project was National University Hospital. When I took over, it was already almost done. I had six months, went through very thoroughly, walked through the whole place. And even in that short walk, you can identify shortcomings. And often, these are always areas for supporting staff, where they are almost always an afterthought.

15.    I remember very clearly something that I insisted - I won't open this hospital until I fixed this - which was the telephone operators' room. That is the most important because this is your showroom, your first contact. When patients are unhappy, when they want to make or change appointment, what do they do? They call the telephone number. The telephone operators are always neglected. I was so surprised when I found where the telephone operators sit somewhere in a dungeon down in the basement, somewhere where there happened to be a space. So 30 of them sat there with no windows! So I said let's move them above ground, create a space if need be, where there is window view. Can you imagine, down in the dark dungeons, even the most engaged and motivated staff will dread going to work. Then imagine you are at the receiving end of anybody who calls up. What kind of response do you get? Since then, I'm glad to see that in the new public hospitals in Singapore, the telephone exchanges are sometimes in the best of places, above ground with very nice views of the hospitals.

16.    The same concept went through into the patient area. Some of you have the misfortune of having to stay in ICU. You visit our old hospitals, where are our ICUs? In the basement! I went through that when I had my heart bypass, down there in the basement, you don't know day or night. You don't even know whether it is raining outside or sunny. Completely disoriented. I'm quite sure this affects how you recover. Since then, if you look at our new hospitals, especially Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, which was my last public hospital that I am personally involved, the ICUs are beautiful, have window views, you can see fruit trees, banana trees. I believe it has an impact on recovery.

17.    SIA includes their cabin crew in the design process to create the best workflow with the least risk. This is the right approach.

18.    At Gee Paw's suggestion, PUB and LTA have jointly formed a Standing Committee to regularly look into this area, to ensure our future generations do not lose sight of this. They will also study some long term measures beyond our generation and put them in place. The PUB-LTA Standing Committee will institutionalise our lessons and hard-earned experiences, so that all these hard-earned lessons do not disappear with us at the crematorium. Thank you.