Covid-19 Has Changed The Way Singaporeans Work

Covid-19 has changed the way singaporeans work and what they want from their homes. This will have a lasting effect on the property market – and in surprising ways.

- Anthony Long

In a year of unprecedented upheavals, perhaps the strangest phenomenon in Singapore has been silent construction sites brought to a halt as Covid-19 spread through the 340,000-strong construction, shipyard and process foreign worker community. Today, as workers return to building sites with new distancing protocols, the fallout of the pandemic is becoming clearer – and the effects are likely to last longer than many could have ever imagined.

As senior director at CIAP Architects, Theodore Chan’s job is to imagine and design that future while tackling more pressing, immediate issues.

He tells The Peak, “We’ve done a lot of healthcare projects – medical centres, clinics and hospitals – and have ongoing projects. But clients have been coming back to us and saying: ‘You know, with this new normal from the pandemic, perhaps we should review the spacing, even in the office. Instead of being 1m apart, should we be 1.5m or 1.8m?’”

This social distancing also applies to construction sites. “The Ministry of Manpower now controls the number of workers one can have at a work site,” Chan says. “Where I used to have 500 workers, I can only have 250 workers now. So what’s going to happen? Productivity is going to be affected very badly. It’s simple mathematics. If a construction project used to take eight months, it’s going to take 16 months now.”

These delays are something the industry has been grappling with. What's more, as most contracts do not list pandemics as force majeure events, developers are not required to grant contractors’ requests for an extension.