Volume 3, Issue 2 June 2018

Special Talk

with a corporate member
IPA Secretariat
Dr. O. Kusakabe, the President of IPA interviewed Mr. David Liaw Wie Sein, the Managing Director of Guan Chuan
Engineering Construction PTE Ltd., in Singapore, on April 24 Tuesday 2018 at IPA office in Tokyo.
Dr. Kusakabe: David, welcome to the IPA headquarters and I am very grateful for having thisopportunity. IPA places a special importance on the role of operators in Press-in Engineering.
Operators’ experiences of solving unexpected difficult problems during piling operation andtheir feedback to project managers, geotechnical designers and machine designers plays anessential role for improving geotechnical design, mechanical design and satisfactory
accomplishment of projects. That is why IPA newsletter includes on-site interview regularly,
trying to convey messages from operators to IPA members.
Mr. David Liaw Wie Sein: Thank you for inviting me for the interview. I cannot agree more what
you have said. Yes, I fully agreed that operators are taking the most important roles in pilingprojects.

Figure 1 Dr. O Kusakabe

Q: Let me ask, first of all, why you entered in piling business.
A: Having some working experiences in Hong Kong after my study at university, I joined the father’s business. He wasdoing a bit of sheet piling business. When I took over his business, the major problems were dealing with hard ground.
I have experienced some accidents as my dark side. In the 1990s, the most, I would say 70%, of accident caused on
sheet piling works were toe failure due to insufficient penetration depth into the hard ground. I had gone through thestages where I used electric hammer, diesel hammer, and vibro-hammer, causing prolong vibration and noise.

Q: What is your view on those toe failures occurred?
A: I thought there are two major reasons behind there. First one is “poor workmanship” and second one is “poormachinery” to deal with hard ground. Then, I also learned through my experience that the design on sheet piling is theother problems too. Excessive design because of the designers’ liabilities concerns and the deviation between designand construction site conditions are the essential reasons, I believe.
Nicoll Highway collapsed on 20 April 2004 was a very important wake-up call for
Singapore Authorities and construction industry. Singapore learned from this bitter
experience. The whole things were changed, and regulations became strict such as anallowable movement limit on Earth Retaining Structures. Concurrently, Building andConstruction Authority (BCA) issued the new Submission Requirements and Procedures.
Then we decided to purchase a Crush Piler for sheet piling to deal with hard ground someten years ago, though it was so expensive. Now we are an integrated design and build
specialist in hard ground and sensitive environment piling work. Our website(http://guanchuan.com/) compiles completed projects, including Singapore General
Hospital project as our remarkable one.
Figure 2Mr. David Liaw Wie Sein

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Volume 3, Issue 2 June 2018

Figure 3 Submission requirement for Earth Retaining Stabilizing Structure (ERSS) issued by BCA

Q: What is your opinion to deal with those criteria?
A: As I said, toe failure is the biggest concerns and major cause of accidents,
so my objective is to guarantee sufficient penetration depth with high qualityof workmanship and machinery to satisfactory comply with the strict
guidelines and regulations. In my view, the quality of workmanship byoperators is very important not only for the proper piling execution under theconstrained circumstances but for feedback of site conditions to the client anddesigners to minimize deviations in design and actual site realty.

Q: How do you train operators from the views of both skill-up andmindset?
A: I strongly believe that there are several key points for operators’ skill-up.
Firstly, the operators have to be skillful with good understanding on machinemechanism. Secondly, the operators should have basic understanding on soil
characteristics and piling mechanism. Thirdly, the operators should have aright mindset to accomplish works safely.
In order to train operators and to share the same understanding of mycompany’s’ policy with operators, I hold “regular morning meeting” on a daily
basis and also hold “internal weekly meeting” for problem finding and solving
to share accumulated experiences among operators/workers who are actually conducting piling works on site. Further,I am very keen to provide continuous trainings for operators by the proper trainer deployed by the manufacture and I
have continued this training every year ever since I purchased Silent Piler. I always made a request to the trainer toaccurately evaluate our operators as his view. I also sent a few operators to the manufacture for initial training at thetime. I guess this continuous training on operators is very essential not only to maintain the quality of operators sinceI employed many foreign operators but also to properly disseminate the Press-in Method in Singapore.

Figure 4 Singapore General Hospital

Q: Can you share with me of your company’s achievement with introduction of some successful projects?
A: All the past projects are introduced on my company website at http://guanchuan.com/crush-piler-page1/ . My
business philosophy is to produce the high quality of work with safety assurance for piling work, not a profit making.
As everyone is aware that Land Transport Authority (LTA) is the most stringent Government Authority in Singapore,
may be in the world. One day, I was invited by LTA to present the project plan with pricing on the particular projectunder tough situation and I raised all concerns and predicted difficulties with my solution scheme in detail. As theconsequence, my company was directly nominated by the Authority to be a specialty contractor without pricenegotiation even before a prime contractor was selected by bidding. Then, the Authority provided a special conditionin the project specification to select my company to be a nominated subcontractor in the bid document for theselection of prime contractors. I was very proud of it and had a confidence on my approach.
I was also invited to IPA Workshop held in Singapore in 2012, a few years later I purchased a Crush Piler, and having an
opportunity to introduce my experiences utilizing a Crush Piler in Singapore market. My speech was introduced as anarticle on newspapers and magazine so that I was able to demonstrate Press-in technology for hard ground and thatwas one of my good turning points to have a wider awareness of Press-in technology for hard ground.

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Volume 3, Issue 2 June 2018
Q: How do you foresee the future of Press-in technology?
A: This is the way to forward though it is still limited use in Singapore. But I believe that it is the matter of time to gain awider acceptance of the technology. I must say that there is still a room, even in Singapore, to improve awareness ofthe Press-in technology. I set the business targets sharing with all employees including operators, which areaccumulating “Self-confidence”, aiming for “Good achievement” without accidents, obtaining “Satisfaction” from
Authorities and finally making “Contribution to society”
Europe and USA may have some difficulties, though. There are Union issue, strong vested interest on conventional
methods and the maturity degree on codes and regulations in construction industry, in my view. Therefore, the otherapproach may have to be considered for positive acceptance of Press-in technology as compared to Asian region.

Q: What kind of messages do you want to convey to operators?
A: Again, I like to send a strong message to operators as “be responsible on quality of piling”, “proud of your skill with
continuous effort to improve” and “maintain good mindset” as qualified operators. Again, as I mentioned earlier andagreed on Dr. Kusakabe’s view that operators’ role is very essential without any doubt.

Q: Considering the recent move to automated construction machine for higher productivity in theconstruction industry, it would lead to change of role of operators. What is your view on this?
A: I totally agree with your view. It is very essential issue to equalize quality with higher productivity. I believe that evenachieving that direction, good feedback from operators and site engineers on design and further development on
machineries are of essence.

David, I thank you to visit IPA headquarters today to share very valuable
information and you’re thought on Press-in technology. Receiving ofyour message will be published on the next IPA newsletter then to be
distributed over 2000 readers throughout the world.

Figure 5 Picture with Mr. David Liaw Wie Sein after the interview

Figure 6 Guan Chuan Engneering
Construction PTE Ltd. home page20