Penny pinching, Malaysian style
Tags: Singapore

Could there be points to take away from the Mad Hatter and his austerity drive?

After ousting Barisan Nasional in the 2018 general election, the good Dr Mahathir and his administration went on a massive cost cutting spree, “cancelling” infrastructure projects such as the HSR and MRT that they deemed wasteful but giving the contractors a chance to have the project resumed if they could find a way to cut costs and/or increase local contribution under the Bumiputera policy.

Now, things are different in Singapore. We don’t have such strict positive discrimination policies, the prime minister didn’t make off with billions of dollars with his partygoing friend, our reputation as a financial centre is much more solidified allowing for potentially easier credit, and of course the government tries to run budget surpluses as often as possible, though that won’t be a thing next year at least.

But unlike other countries who have kept their workforces manageable and allowed transit development projects to continue albeit with lesser staffing and thus slower work progress, we had the migrant worker dormitory outbreak which has hit the construction sector pretty hard. Along with disruptions to supply chains for raw materials, this has significantly affected things — the NELe is confirmed to be delayed by a year; they predict up to a year’s delay for the remaining projects but of course things may still change.

Maybe we don’t need to save money, but it may be a good idea to explore what Malaysia did, in order to allow us to reprioritize resources towards meeting the political promises of providing train service by the stated deadlines.

oop north

An oft-used tool in the Malaysian toolbox was to “defer” stations that were placed in deserted areas — in other words, stop work on them, and for underground stations such as in the Bandar Malaysia area, do just enough so that the station can be activated later when development does come much like our Hume and Bukit Brown stations. This resulted in 4 stations being cut from MRT2 and 5 from LRT3.

This, however, is mostly not an option here given that the confirmed sections of JRL and CRL pass through already-populated areas and even some areas with confirmed development in progress. These need enhancements in public transportation service, so deferring any stations in residential areas might be political suicide — though perhaps the poor off-peak usage of TWE stations may give some space to rethink the JRL3 stations within Jurong Industrial Estate. For other unconfirmed sections, maybe perhaps they could weasel out of doing anything more than a shell in the Turf City and Clementi Road areas for now, until development picks up to warrant the construction of stations there.

But what else can be done? MRT2 also proposed several other measures in an attempt to cut costs to a manageable level. Mostly, these included “deferring” various exits and other access points to the stations, as well as other things like reducing park and ride capacity (this is Malaysia, after all!), reducing the provision of covered walkways, and value engineering things like interior fittings. Even the number of escalators within the station could see reductions.

While Malaysians find some of these quite unacceptable due to the walkability issues around their stations, we don’t have such problems here for the most part. Thus, done properly, perhaps some of these could be done here too, but with clear milestones at which the original design can be completely built out depending on the projections for how much people each station will serve. Perhaps by separating them out into smaller contracts, local builders could be further incentivized to participate, with the smaller underpass contracts also giving them the opportunity to develop expertise in underground construction?

Back in the 1980s, the then-astronomical $5 billion price tag of the MRT Initial System meant that one had to be economical with station designs, with largely homogenous aboveground stations, and just minor changes of palette underground. Ultimately, perhaps a return to the Initial System ethos of stations as infrastructure that works instead of grand landmarks would be a good idea, and extravagant designs won’t be missed by me personally.

Go back to the drawing board

But is the above even possible?

It was only in 2018 that the Singapore BCA began requiring public sector projects to adopt “early contractor involvement” efforts, such as design-build. Alon Levy dislikes design-build, but as his comments section points out, if done properly, design-build can bring a fair bit of savings, in time, money or both, by allowing the contractor and his expertise to be involved at an earlier stage.

Of course, it is the JRL that benefits most from a rethinking of design ethos. The JRL does not employ the CCL4/5 method of having large work packages across 4–5 stations (the largest being J102, only 3 stations), but given how renders show most JRL stations bearing a lot of similarity to each other with only a change in colour palette, it could be possible for the contractors to team up and take advantage of greater economies of scale in purchasing. At both TEL4/5 and JRL/CRL, some exits could also have their opening dates adjusted to only be completed closer to (or after) the station opening.

But where contractors have the flexibility to innovate, they should be given it. Such as in Contract J110, where instead of the ambitious plan to remove the latticework roof and replace it with a new high-ceilinged green roof, based on renders, it appears that the contractor chose to tweak the plans to allow the access to the JRL to be “tacked on” to one end of the station and thus most of the station remains untouched. This may have allowed the successful contractor to make a bid that was considerably lower than the other bidders.

Another possibility for JRL is what is called “design for manufacturing and assembly”. Of course, the options available here are limited given the specialized design required for train stations, but given that most JRL stations already look pretty similar, it may be possible to have a common toolbox of precast structural components to be used in the design and construction of stations. Design-wise, JRL can be said to be quite similar to other projects such as the LRT lines in KL and the REM in Montreal, so a plop-plop-plop-and-go approach with high standardization and high reliance on prefabrication could help to compress the project schedule.

In Melbourne, there have been a very high use of precast structures to reduce the amount of time that works take place. Since grade separations in Melbourne have involved the need to close the entire rail line, keeping the construction timeline as short as possible also helps to reduce inconvenience to the surroundings. This is a lesson the JRL Project could also adopt, given its urban layout where the construction sites will be right up against people’s houses and may involve road disruptions.

Plop and go in Hong Kong, too (source: MTRC via HKRDG)

For CRL, the fact that most contracts will likely only be awarded in the 2021 government financial year might help here. With the additional time, it would be possible for the authorities to work with the various contractors in order to propose modified designs that can be built cheaper or faster, such as using top-down construction methods.

The use of prefabrication might be of limited help here, given the tight space underground and the custom design of rooms. At most, prefabricated wall panels could be used, maybe even floor slabs as well. But in general, it can also be considered to make better use of space within station boxes in order to allow them to be smaller, so that the time-consuming process of bulk excavation can be reduced. Of course, not to the extent that key commuter facilities are gone, like in KL where the link between the Kelana Jaya line and SSP MRT line at Ampang Park station was to be deleted.

Bug squishing

But in a sense construction is easy, and the hardest part is always the software. We’re learning this now when the LTA used the last big TEL disruption as an excuse to claim that the software was not ready, and that in order to review the software implementation they were kicking TEL2 down the road by another half a year.

Making up lost time during the construction phase, only to potentially lose it again during the systems testing period, does sound counterintuitive. But in my opinion, systems is a risk that deserves to be hedged against too. We’ve been bitten at least once — system integration issues resulted in the Tuas West Extension losing nearly a full year, and the aftermath of the Joo Koon collision resulted in almost another year before it could be of any material use.

For some other international comparisons, one can look to Crossrail in London, or the Green line in Taichung, as examples of how construction work can proceed smoothly but systems works jam up the entire process. An extreme example is the Muzha line in Taipei (now part of the Wenhu line), that lost 4 years in a long saga involving at least two vehicle fires, a derailment, and the systems supplier Matra walking off the job. I think it’s fair to say that either there are issues with the colour brown, or Taipei Metro now has a lot of experience to pull from. Even MTR has had to pull the rollout of upgraded signalling on the East Rail line literally the night before it was to go live.

While facilities like the CBTC Simulation Facility for each line or the ITTC now under construction in Tuas can be used to mitigate this risk by providing a controlled environment for software development, and limited systems integration works to take place before they get deployed onto the mainline, there is no replacement for real testing works. Yes, maybe more closures can help, but there is no point if the software is not ready. Yes, maybe a phased approach might help, but if they can’t build confidence in Stage One, what makes you think they’re ready for Stage Two?

On further consideration, though, for TEL maybe we can afford to recombine stages as well. Back at the mainline CBTC rollout, they took a big risk in opting to transition one entire line at one go, for the most part avoiding the need to have to transition between CBTC and fixed block modes. A theory I have is that large rollouts avoid repeating too often the paperwork associated with safety assurances — which would have had to be done repeatedly with partial rollouts, but it may result in a larger workload where a larger chunk of software has to be proven reliable with a larger test matrix.

In a situation where construction work is largely complete for want of systems testing delays, all eyes will be on what happens after they go through the software with a fine-toothed comb; whether this will clog up the process, or to be woefully optimistic, if there is even the opportunity to deliver stage three of the TEL within 2021. But of course, to even get into this position one would have to make sure the actual building works are done on time, though creative thinking with the systems timetable may help to open as soon as reasonably practical.

After all, some quarters (myself included) may feel that the MRT system isn’t expanding fast enough especially with the previous rate of urban growth. Even if we think we have reached a sustainable level of urban development, it still means we need to complete MRT lines ASAP in order to provide that additional capacity.