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 Mr Tan Gee Paw, Chairman, Public Utilities Board;

 Mr Chew Men Leong, Chief Executive, Land Transport Authority;

 Mr Desmond Kuek, President and Group Chief Executive Officer, SMRT;

 Mr Gan Juay Kiat, Chief Executive Officer, SBS Transit;

 Friends, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen.

 1          A very good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining me at the first Joint Forum on Infrastructure Maintenance. I am happy to see so many engineers here, especially lady engineers. In MND, we encourage our statutory boards to go all out to try to balance and achieve gender equality. HDB has been quite successful. When I visited Pulau Tekong sometime ago, I saw quite a number of the young lady engineers, excited about their jobs and because we have real serious work which is challenging, exciting and at the frontier of things.

2          Like most of you here this morning, I am an engineer. And I am proud to be one, for much has been achieved by engineers in Singapore. Many of our pioneers in nation building were engineers. 

“Real, Productive Workers”

3          Recently, a friend of mine sent me a provocative article by David Graeber, Professor of Anthropology from the London School of Economics.  The article was titled “On the Phenomenon of Bull-shit Jobs”.  Yes, he used the 4-letter word!  Professor Graeber observed the progressive squeezing and reduction of what he called “real, productive workers” and the concurrent ballooning of “a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing”. He listed a number of such jobs.  I don't quite agree with his selection. But if you are curious, go Google and read up his article.

4          But more importantly, in the same article, he paid tribute to these “real, productive workers”: “people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things”. In other words, people like you.  He had a simple test to identify these workers, which is to ask: “What would happen should this entire class of people simply disappear?” And he added: “Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it's obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble.”

Infrastructure Memorandum of Understanding

5          Engineers are clearly part of Professor Graeber's “real, productive workers”. So our ladies, welcome to the real profession. They build the country; they keep it humming along. The unhappiness of Singaporeans over train disruptions, I think, is testament to the fact that we have high expectations of the engineers who build, run and maintain the MRT.  The same applies to our engineers who build and maintain our flats, roads, sewers, power, and pipelines.  This high expectation of the state of infrastructure in Singapore stems from the track record of our pioneer engineers, and is not common globally. Citizens of many countries, both developed and developing, have come to accept poor infrastructure as a way of life. But not here in Singapore. 

6          AsCoordinating Minister for Infrastructure, it is my responsibility to ensure that we continue to meet the high standards that Singaporeans expect of our infrastructure.  The way to do so isto further develop our overall engineering capacity and capability, through a united infrastructure corps.

7          Just now before the conference, I was chatting with some of the CEOs. There is no regrets, just go all out, increase and spend on a number of scholarships. In MND, in the last few years, we expanded the numbers. So each year, one of the happiest events I attend is the scholarships award ceremony. Every year, we give out couple of hundreds of scholarships, of all kinds - architects, engineers; in multiple disciplines.

8          As a fellow engineer, PUB Chairman Tan Gee Paw shares my views. For some years now, our engineers have been deepening their expertise in their respective disciplines. This has allowed us to innovate and respond to our unique circumstances. We invented NEWater to address water sustainability concerns. We built the Marina Coastal Expressway underground through reclaimed land and under Marina Bay to overcome our land constraints. But even as we strive for greater depth within our respective domains, we should also look out for opportunities to learn across sectors. There are always things to learn from across the sectors. When I was running hospitals, I made sure that our management team recruited management trainees into the hospital administration. We get them from outside the healthcare sector, architectural firms, the media world, because of the cross-fertilisation of experiences and expertise. Sometimes you get questions like “Ah, why can't we do it this way?” “In our sector, we did it this way, have you tried this with healthcare?”. This is particularly so in areas like IT. Healthcare has always been a bit of a laggard in the applications of IT, whereas in the various financial sectors or casino sector which have greatest usage and proper application of IT to improve productivity and the way they do their business. We can always tap on IT for healthcare, likewise in our engineering sector. But even as we strive for greater depth in our respective domains, let us look out for all these new opportunities to learn across the sectors. Therefore, when Gee Paw mooted the idea of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to bring together our collective expertise from various infrastructure sectors and also to raise the profile of the engineering community, we readily agreed.

9          PUB, LTA, SMRT and SBST will be the pioneer signatories of this MoU. We have chosen the water utilities and rail sectors as they are literally the lifeblood of our country. Over time, we want to invite more organisations to join this community.

An Integrated Approach in Rail

10        For the rail sector, raising rail reliability is our top priority. A few weeks ago, in a blog post, I set out a seven-point strategy which will require an immense multi-year effort from LTA, SMRT and SBST. Today's MoU is part of that strategy to enhance the maintenance capability of the existing workforce. 

11        One key element of the strategy is to further develop engineering capacity.  With an expanding rail network, we must rapidly build up a larger group of engineers who are experts in design, building, maintenance and operations.  These are what I call core competencies and we must have local engineers who know what to do.  One of the first few things I did when I entered MND was to sit down with our staff, let's be clear, what are our core competencies? Core competencies are competencies that we must have within us. We cannot outsource these core competencies. Other things we can outsource - in order to bring in new experience, new expertise. But what are the basic stuff that you yourself must know? In MND, we narrowed down to a few things: Garden City - we must know horticulture, plants, how to keep the city green in the tropics. Of course, public housing - we must know how to plan, build; we must know how to maintain our housing estates. Urban planning - one of the pride of Singapore.

12        We must have our own people, not necessarily locally born, but we can recruit them to augment and in due course, they become citizens, I think that should be welcomed. We cannot simply outsource the engineering work to foreigners or contractors who just come and go. When we have to do ad-hoc projects, we can engage consultants who provide extra hands and legs. But our own engineers must know how to design and how to construct the project themselves. I think the saddest day is when you don't even know how to write tender specifications, when you have to engage consultants to help you write tender specifications because how would you then assess the tender specifications? If everything is outsourced away, you are then just a paymaster. 

13        LTA already has a large number of engineers.  Still, we have decided to ramp up the numbers for three reasons.  First, it is obviously to match the ramped-up pace of rail building.  Secondly, we need to work much more closely with the operators, SMRT and SBST, if we are to improve maintenance performance and close the gap with the best in class. While the operators are themselves rapidly increasing their number of maintenance engineers and technicians, LTA willbe augmenting with their own employees to help provide additional expertise including to audit the various processes, and to use Gee Paw's words, to “catch rats”.  Working side by side, this will also forge a culture of collaboration and team work.  Moreover, it will provide the LTA engineers with valuable operational experience.  This will help to close the loop between design and operation. Overall engineering excellence comes with insights gleaned as an operator, which even the best designers cannot achieve on their own.  This is something I feel very strongly. I've been involved, fortunately, in my career, in the design, planning and running of hospitals. So we do the whole spectrum of the value chain - as a user, from design, build, supervise building, actual taking over, commissioning the hospital, running it and maintaining it. That way, because we need to build new hospitals as the population ages and expands, my project brief to our hospital planning teams is always: Every new hospital must be better than the previous hospital. You cannot put in a hospital which is more of the same. More of the same means you are walking backwards, because technology progresses, needs change, clientele and patient profile changes. If you are just building always the same type of hospital, then I think we are literally walking backwards and we are not exploiting changes in technology and innovations in the way hospitals are being planned. And to be able to do so, you must close this loop, from designs all the way to operations. Then from operations, you learn, “Why didn't I do this this way”, “Why didn't I do it that way”. Never mind, you learn from this. The next construction, the next line, the next hospital, the next school, the next library will be better.

14        A rail network is a complex, dynamic living system which must continually evolve to meet technology upgrades and changing user requirements.  It must therefore be able to evolve with changing needs and changing science. To manage such an evolving system, we have to take a life-cycle perspective. And life-cycle perspective is not merely taking a “make or buy” decision when the time calls for it. That is not enough.  We must continually look out for opportunities to innovate, to improve, to drive upgrades and renewals, plus create flexibility and options for the future.

15        It is my strong belief that creating an excellent rail system requires an integrated approach, from design through construction, actual operations and maintenance.  This will help us develop this life-cycle perspective. The operational experience should feed back into the design stage, so designs can improve over time, and reduce the need for “rat catchers”. And the experience acquired has to be systematically documented, institutionalised, and taught to successors. Only then can we sustain world-class rail services. The worst thing to happen is you are not learning from experience, from lessons. Each hospital or each new rail line just repeats past errors, and you just carry on. I think that will be a very sad day.

16        Unfortunately, our current model separates the designer and builder, which is LTA, from the maintainer and operator, which is SMRT and SBST.  From an economist's viewpoint, this allows for more competition so that we can pick and choose the operator. And if the operator is lousy, we can sack the operator and replace with another operator. But from an engineer's viewpoint, I think it is not so ideal from the life-cycle perspective. I'm an engineer, I prefer an engineer's viewpoint. But it is not so easy to change the model that we have today overnight.

17        Instead, the more immediate thing we can do is to improve integration through process, by forging a culture of One Team, despite coming from different employers.  This is the second-best we can do. This is legacy, we all come from different employers, but never mind. When we face a problem we face it as One Team. It does not matter whether you are LTA or SMRT or SBST; when a problem crops up, it is everybody's problem. Because to the commuters, I don't care whether your uniform is LTA or SBST. I have a problem, please solve it. And this is your problem. And to them in Singapore, this is Government, this is Government's problem. So you can't shirk. You cannot say it's not me, and point fingers everywhere. You end up like the Guan Yin Pu Sa with multiple hands. That doesn't solve problems. So let us, regardless of our employment terms, forge this single team. And this requires unwavering commitment from top-level management, from MOT, LTA and the train operators to forge this culture.  I am devoting part of my time to this effort, because it is critical to raising rail reliability. 

18        For new rail lines, for future rail lines, I think we have the opportunity to shape the way we do things.  And this is the third reason why I asked LTA to build up their engineering team.  They must establish a team that is able to take on operations and maintenance, should we decide to move in that direction.  This team can then be involved in all aspects of the value chain, going beyond design and construction, which LTA is already doing, to operations and maintenance.  By deploying them to augment the SMRT and SBST maintenance crews now, our LTA team will also pick up valuable on-the-job experience immediately.

19        This was how we recruited and grew the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) team in Alexandra Hospital (AH). We recruited them - not the entire hospital team, but a sufficient number of the staff who were meant to subsequently man KTPH - and put them in AH, working side by side with the AH team. Although their primary function when they were stationed at AH was to plan and design the new hospital that they would be running, it allowed them to work side by side with AH.  So this way, it is win-win.  AH benefitted from additional staff and improved service levels, and the new KTPH team benefitted from real work experience, even while they were doing paper planning. It was a very successful model, and that's why after I left, I noticed that MOH also used the same approach when they were planning, designing and building the new Ng Teng Fong General Hospital.  We can do the same for the new Thomson-East Coast Line.

Conclusion

20        The rail industry is growing rapidly.  In 15 years, we will have doubled the length of our existing network. Our rail sector is also diversifying. So it's not just the city metro, we are going into a High Speed Rail to Kuala Lumpur.  It is a growing, expanding industry, with many challenges for talented students and mid-career professionals.  Rail engineering can also be fun, like how PUB has proven so for the water industry. It is not just about maintenance. It can also be at the cutting edge of research and innovation, with potential for creating new businesses.

21        So while our immediate priority is to fix the current rail disruptions, our eyes are actually on the future.  The rail industry offers and will continue to offer good paying jobs for Singaporeans. It is meaningful work where you build something that lasts generations and makes a difference to the lives of Singaporeans. We must build a strong Singaporean core in the sector that can provide a reliable, world-class service to Singaporeans. 

22        Today's MoU is an important step, for Singaporean engineers to unite to learn from one another. With this, we want to make engineering sexy once again, and to be able to attract more talent to join this important profession to help build Singapore.

23        I wish all of you a successful collaboration, and a useful workshop. Thank you.