KUCHING: Industrialised Building System (IBS) can help the construction industry in Sarawak reduce its reliance on foreign workers.
IBS is a construction technique whereby components are manufactured in a controlled environment.
The controlled environment can be on-site or off-site and depends on the component manufactured or the type of building being constructed.
University of Technology Sarawak (UTS) Associate Professor Dr Wong Sing Sing said IBS would allow for faster project completion with fewer workers on-site.
“Construction process would be less time consuming, especially the curing and hardening time required for the concrete cast on-site.
“With IBS, the industry can reduce the number of workers — who are usually foreigners — on-site as most of the construction activities, especially wet trade work, are transferred to the factory.
“Thus, the demand for on-site workers to carry out manual jobs, particularly in concreting, bar bending, formwork fabrication work, bricklaying and plastering becomes less,” he explained.
“As for conventional construction methods, it is always utilising a huge number of workers to carry out wet trade work on-site,” he said, adding that IBS could also see cleaner, neater and safer construction sites.
The conventional construction projects with more wet trade work, he said, would also lead to higher accident risks such as workers stepping on nails protruding from the timber formwork or workers falling through scaffolding ladder access gaps and getting injured.
He was commenting on Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg’s recent remarks that the construction industry in Sarawak must learn to adopt mechanisation and automation for certain operations in order to reduce its reliance on foreign workers.
Abang Johari said the construction industry must stop relying on foreign workers from Indonesia because the country would need more labourers of its own as the new capital Nusantara would be constructed in Kalimantan.
However, Wong said, the installation work of certain IBS components could sometimes be influenced by adverse weather if the installation involved the usage of electric power tools. The installation could not be conducted during rainy days as these tools would be damaged if exposed to rainwater.
Another setback for IBS, he said, would be the resistance to change, negative perceptions of stakeholders towards IBS designs, expensive overall construction costs, lack of knowledge and exposure to IBS technology and lack of IBS manufacturers in the industry.
“Although the IBS components are factory produced with minimum chances of human mistakes, the problems especially connection cracks and leakage problems occur during connections on-site. This is due to a lack of design consideration which subsequently leads to leakage problems leading to low quality finished work.”
Meanwhile, the expensive overall construction costs would usually be due to high transportation costs, especially when the project site is far away from the manufacturer.
He said the situation would become worse when the site is situated in a rural area or can only be reached by river, posing a logistical problem.
“This infers that the total construction cost of an IBS project is greatly influenced by the location and accessibility of the site.”
