154th: Buy Lum Chang But Leeport Silent on Nicholl Highway MRT Collapse!

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<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=452><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width=452 colSpan=2>No wonder it's ranked 154th!

Published June 22, 2009

</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=452 colSpan=2>Lum Chang comes of age with LTA job

By VEN SREENIVASAN
<TABLE class=storyLinks border=0 cellSpacing=4 cellPadding=1 width=136 align=right><TBODY><TR class=font10><TD width=20 align=right> </TD><TD>Email this article</TD></TR><TR class=font10><TD width=20 align=right> </TD><TD>Print article </TD></TR><TR class=font10><TD width=20 align=right> </TD><TD>Feedback</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>LATE last week, infrastructure engineering specialist Lum Chang Holdings Group (LCH) announced its latest contract which marks a coming of age for this 60-year-old engineering company.

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</TD></TR><TR><TD bgColor=#fffff1><TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=124 align=center><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top>Lum Chang is now well positioned to capitalise on more opportunities as the Singapore govt prepares to spend up to $20b on public-sector construction this year.
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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>In an announcement made quietly through the Singapore Exchange, the mainboard-listed company revealed that it had clinched a windfall $452 million Land Transport Authority (LTA) Mass Rapid Transit project.
The project is for the design and construction of the Bukit Panjang MRT Station of the Downtown Line Stage 2, which will be located along Upper Bukit Timah Road at the junction of Bukit Panjang and Choa Chu Kang Road/Wood- lands Road, and the 'cut and cover' tunnels connecting the Bukit Panjang Station to a depot at Gali Batu.
Not surprisingly, this usually illiquid counter sprang to life last Friday afternoon, rising as much as 25 per cent during the three hours after its lunchtime announcement.
This latest contract - LCH's single largest to date - will boost its order book from some $563 million to more than $1 billion. It will also keep the company busy through the next six years.
While this project will not have a material impact on the final results of LCH for the current financial year ending June 30, 2009, it will boost LCH's topline by an additional $80 million every year for the next five years. Work on this latest contract is expected to start later this month, with a targeted completion date in 2015.
This is on top of various other projects it is currently involved in, including its $322 million joint venture project with Japanese multinational engineering firm Nishimatsu on the MRT Circle Line Stage 2, its $83 million Twenty Anson project and its $150 million Changi Business Park Phase I and II projects.
Company officials have remained characteristically reticent and have refused to elaborate on the latest contract. But as industry insiders observe, the contract signifies a maturation from its beginnings as a general construction contractor.
This is because, for the first time, the company has bid and won a major infrastructure project as a Class A engineering contractor.
Class A companies are those with the technological and engineering capability to bid independently and singly for large and complex civil and infrastructure projects without having to partner with seasoned multinational giants.
There are believed to be less than a dozen homegrown companies with such class A certification.
Clinching such a huge deal single-handedly also places it in a strong position to bid for many of the $50 billion worth of infrastructure projects - especially in land transportation, comprising MRT and road tunnels in the pipeline over the next 20 years.
The company is not new to the MRT infrastructure business, having worked on the Bishan depot, and the City Hall, Lavender, Bugis and Clarke Quay stations. But those projects were all done in partnership with Nishimatsu.
It was also involved in the award-winning $213 million Changi Water Reclamation Plant, which will be officially opened by PM Lee Hsien Loong.
Lum Chang is now well positioned to capitalise on more opportunities as the Singapore government prepares to spend up to $20 billion on public-sector construction this year, in projects such as the Downtown MRT Line, Marina Coastal Expressway, Sports Hub, a new cruise liner terminal, parks in the Marina Bay area, the upgrading of HDB estates, water and drainage projects, schools and more. Another $17 billion will be spent annually on public-sector construction in 2010 and 2011.
It is now preparing to bid for several of the 20 project packages on the Downtown 3 Line, running from the City to Changi Expo.
The experience Lum Chang gains from the numerous and complex infrastructure projects in Singapore will also enhance its standing as its broadens its footprint around the Asia-pacific and beyond. This junior partner of global infrastructure giants has certainly come of age.
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http://www.nce.co.uk/base-slab-focus-for-singapore-tunnel-collapse/745869.article

Base slab focus for Singapore tunnel collapse

1 June, 2004
THE SINGAPORE cut and cover tunnel collapse in April, the biggest retaining wall failure in history, was probably triggered by heaveinduced base slab failure.


Four workers died when the diaphragm walls of an open cut tunnel being excavated for Singapore Mass Rapid Transit's Circle Line caved in at 3.30pm, on 21 April.

Investigators are thought to be examining the contractor's decision to form an unreinforced jet grouted base slab 30m underground in the soft marine clays. The slab is thought to have failed, triggering the collapse of propped diaphragm walls progressively from the base.

Joint venture contractor Nishimatsu-Lum Chang's excavation was about 15m wide and 33m deep and had reached a depth of 30m at the time of collapse. Failure over a length of 80m triggered major movement in the surrounding ground.

The scale of the failure is unprecedented.

Settlement of up to 15m occurred over an area 100m in diameter around the cave-in, destroying part of Nicoll Highway, Singapore's major east-west harbour front road.

The S$209M (£69.7M) project, for the Singapore government's Land Transport Authority (LTA), was being carried out on a design and build, lump sum basis.

The contractor opted for a cut and cover tunnelling solution that is widely used in Singapore - but not normally for excavations as deep as that at Nicoll Highway, or in such difficult ground conditions.

Furthermore its design featured relatively short diaphragm walls based in the marine clay, with little or no embedment below the bottom of the jet-grouted base slab.

Concerns centre on the integrity of the jetgrouted base slab and the structural connection between the slab, walls and heave resisting tension piles.

In the weeks following the collapse, severe cracking developed in a number of low-rise buildings along Upper Paya Lebar road close to the Nicoll Highway collapse zone.

Affected structures have been shored up and two vacant buildings have been declared unsafe 'but pose no danager to passers-by' Andrew Mylius in Singapore, Paul Wheeler Highway history Problems with retaining wall excavations close to Nicoll Highway are well known.

Nicoll Highway was built in the 1950s on land reclaimed from beyond Beach Road, the original shoreline. Fill material would have been dumped over the soft marine clays, which are unusually deep in the area, extending to between 50m and 60m.

Contractors experienced serious problems with a 9m deep basement during construction of the Gateway complex in the late 1980s. At one point sheet piles started yielding.

A few years earlier, excavation for the 7m deep basement for the adjacent Concourse building ran into similar problems.

William Powrie, professor of geotechnical engineering at Southampton University, said with retaining walls in soft clays, base stability can be more critical than lateral, which is often the main focus of the design.

Safety reward Singapore's government is to launch an incentive scheme to boost safety in its construction industry, delegates at the World Tunnel Congress in Singapore heard in May.

Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong said contractors with good safety performance will be rewarded an additional 0.5% of the contract sum, capped at a maximum of S$1M (£340,000).

But those with poor safety performance may lose an equivalent amount off its contract value.

Yeo said: 'This new scheme will provide an added incentive for contractors to promote safe-work practices at their work sites.'

Bid questions Procurement of public works in Singapore has come in for severe scrutiny following the Nicholl Highway collapse.

In May it was revealed that the Nishimatsu-Lam Chang tender was 25% lower than its nearest competitor bid. But Singapore transport minister Yeo Cheow Tong said that as the tender was close to the LTA's pre-tender estimate it was 'only logical' to give it the contract.

The government says contracts are awarded on the basis of best value for money in terms of both quality and performance.

For the Nicholl Highway Circle Line contract, LTA received six tenders but filtered them down to three after evaluation. Two committees determined that Nishimatsu-Lum Chang's proposal was 'either technically equal to or better in various aspects than the other two'.

A spokesman said: 'It is not necessary that the contract will go to the lowest bidder; between April and December last year, 28% of all public sector contracts were not awarded to the lowest bidder.'

Investigation agenda Two investigations are being held into the cause of the collapse.

One, for the Land Transport Authority, is expected to report later this summer, but its conclusions are not expected to be made public.

The second, for the government started in June, and its results will be publicly available.

Both investigations will seek to establish whether negligence was to blame for the collapse, and whether any party will be criminally liable.

Issues on the agenda include:

ladequacy of temporary works design;

lquality of materials and workmanship;

ladequacy of supervision of the five or six tiers of subcontractors by the main contractor;

lwhether the LTA's supervisory regime was adequate;

laccuracy and adequacy of instrumentation;

ladequacy of the design against base heave;

lwhether struts had been removed to allow machine access and then replaced incorrectly;

lwhether jacks used to pre-compress the struts had been installed correctly, and whether they were working properly;

ladequacy of the connection between the base slab, diaphragm walls and heave piles.

Warning noises One gang of construction workers said their foreman had picked up on unusual cracking and groaning noises in struts towards the bottom of the 30m deep excavation at about 9am on the day of the collapse.

That afternoon, workers were alerted to the impending failure by loud cracking noises in those same deep struts 15 to 20 minutes before the diaphragm walls started moving.

The clayey earth reportedly flowed into the excavation 'like water'.

Workers described racing to outclimb the flood of material welling up from below and pouring in through the huge tears appearing between panels of the diaphragm walls in the shortlived but intensely violent collapse.