As construction moves to factories, builders deal with new costs and tech

(Oct 9): When construction company BBR Holdings (S) embarked on the building of the North Hill residential halls in 2014, there was a lot of scepticism that the company would be able to complete it.

“Some of our own staff thought it was not possible. We had a project engineer who thought we were doing something crazy and said he had better not get involved,” says John Mo, managing director of BBR’s wholly-owned subsidiary BBR Construction Systems.

North Hill is a cluster of high-rise dormitories in Nanyang Technological University. It is also Singapore’s first high-rise public project built using the Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction method. PPVC is a Lego-like building method that involves manufacturing free-standing modules — complete with finishes for walls, floors and ceilings — in factories.

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