Commencement Guest Speaker: Er. Ong See Ho

Speech By Er. Ong See Ho, Managing Director (Built Environment Technology Centre), Building & Construction Authority. At The Engineering Commencement 2018 Ceremony (C14), For CEE Graduation On Monday, 16 July 2017 At 8 Pm.

Professor Chua Kee Chaing, Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Distinguished Guests, Graduates, Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening.

I would like to thank NUS for giving me this opportunity to be here to share your achievements, pride and happiness.

I am sure many of you had stayed up late last night and early this morning, for obvious reason. And I believe a large group of those here had been similarly burning the midnight oil for the past many years to get to this proud day today. So I would like to congratulate and thank this group, I mean the parents of the graduates, who had worked hard, probably stayed up late, to provide support and encouragement to your children who have achieved this well-earned degree. Of course, I must also congratulate all the graduates here who deserve to be rewarded with your degree for all the hard work you had put in.

You have gone through your years in university in a much more productive way compared to the time when I was in university more than 4 decades ago. For example, you probably had tried multi-tasking while class is in session, chatting with many friends and many other tasks. During our time, we could only pass written notes to the one seated next to us. And the way you will be carrying out your work as civil engineers have also changed significantly now. So it may not be relevant for me to share with you most of my working experience.

However, I wish to bring out 3 areas which may still be useful for you to consider as you start work as civil engineers.

The first is on aiming to be registered as a professional engineer. The work of many civil engineers would require you to be registered professional engineers. So I strongly encourage you to get yourself registered as a professional engineer. There is some effort in applying for registration, as there is a couple of examinations that you have to pass. When I was the Registrar and a Board member of the Professional Engineers Board for more than 15 years since 1999, we managed this examination system for registration of PEs. We noticed that it was much easier for fresh graduates to prepare and take the first examination, which is the Fundamentals of Engineering, as soon as they graduate. For this reason, the Professional Engineers Board has recently amended the Rules to allow students in their final year of study to take this first examination, even before they graduate, and coincidentally, this rule comes into operation from today. So I would encourage all of you to take the first PE examination as soon as possible after your graduation.

The second area is on safety. Civil engineers play a vital role in designing and implementing solutions for the built environment sector to ensure building and structural safety in Singapore. As civil engineers, safety is mission critical on both fronts safety for yourself while carrying out work and safety of users of the products that you are designing and constructing. Safety in our industry is one area where there should not be any compromise. All of us must strive to ensure that our career as civil engineers is free from compromises in safety. This may sound formidable, but is achievable.

As we go about with our work, we need to be constantly alert about the need for safety along the whole life cycle, from design to construction, maintenance and usage. The recent regulations on Design for Safety requires all designers to ensure that what you have designed can be built and maintained safely. This is on top of the usual expectation that the completed design will stand up as a permanent structure that meets the safety requirements.

A prominent civil engineer who had considerable experience in designing innovative buildings and an expert on structural disasters, Lev Zetlin, once said, "Engineers should be slightly paranoiac during the design stage. They should consider and imagine that the impossible could happen. They should not be complacent and secure in the mere realisation that if all the requirements of the design handbooks and manuals have been satisfied, the structure will be safe and sound."

The best lesson on avoiding engineering failures is to study case histories of past failures. When I was the Commissioner of Building Control in the Building and Construction Authority, we monitor and track failures all over the world and share with industry the lessons learnt.

My third message is on the commencement of your continuing development. It is important for civil engineers to build deep engineering expertise to uplift your capabilities and improve the standards of the industry. The landscape of the industry is also changing. For example, in the build environment sector, the BCA is pushing hard to change the way we build. The industry is now in the process of adopting some of these changes. One area of change is on design, where Building Information Modelling (or BIM in short), together with Integrated Digital Delivery are introduced in the design processes to integrate the work of interdisciplinary teams. The other change is on construction where the concept of DFMA, which stands for Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, is used to construct buildings in factories and to assemble them on site.

As you begin your new professional life, it is useful that you keep abreast of changes as the industry transforms. And you should avail yourselves of the numerous continuing professional development courses and training programmes to hone your professional skills. The NUS Engineering Faculty, as well as the new setup in NUS, called SCALE, are venues where you can look up for continuing development programmes. There are also others, like the Institution of Engineers Singapore Academy and BCA Academy, where there are many continuing development programmes for you to choose from.

So how do you start from here? I would recommend you start by becoming a member of the Institution of Engineers Singapore, or IES in short. There are a number of committees within IES which you can join and that is where issues affecting the industry are discussed. As an active member, you will be exposed to fellow members of the community and also get to network with senior members.

Lastly, as you head into the new world of professional life, let me express a word of caution. You might already have or may hear from some seniors that civil engineering is a sunset industry. Don't be discouraged. It is not true.

The Minister of National Development has reminded the industry several times that we are not done building Singapore. There are still many mega and long term projects on the drawing board, some of which are Changi Airport Terminal 5, Tuas Mega Port, Greater Southern Waterfront, redevelopment at Paya Lebar Airport, large scale reclamation and coastal works, plus the continuous development works to accommodate an enlarged target population of 6.9 million. This reminds me of the time when I started my professional life after graduation at Changi Airport Phase 1 construction. The Changi Terminal 5 project is almost as large as the current airport. You have graduated at an opportune time to be involved in all these projects which can last throughout your whole career as civil engineer.

So I wish you all the best and let me convey my congratulations to all of you. Thank you.