{"id":27563,"date":"2019-06-30T11:50:23","date_gmt":"2019-06-30T03:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.99.co\/blog\/singapore\/?p=27563"},"modified":"2022-06-13T17:23:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T09:23:40","slug":"the-subtle-underrated-way-that-bca-is-making-your-property-maintenance-cheaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.99.co\/singapore\/insider\/the-subtle-underrated-way-that-bca-is-making-your-property-maintenance-cheaper\/","title":{"rendered":"The Subtle, Underrated Way that BCA is Making Your Property Maintenance Cheaper"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) mainly gets attention from property developers, but not so much from the end buyers. Their role is pretty underrated; and here’s something they’re up to that may help with your property maintenance:<\/p>\n

The Maintainable Design Appraisal System (MiDAS)<\/h3>\n

Unless you’re “in the industry”, you probably haven’t heard of MiDAS<\/a> yet. This is a methodology that aims to lower the dollar and labour cost of maintaining a building over the years.<\/p>\n

The system assesses a building through four disciplines: architectural, mechanical, electrical, and landscape; there’s also a segment on innovation, to promote any new technologies. Based on the assessment, the building then gets a MiDAS score; this indicates the potential labour and cost savings on later maintenance.<\/p>\n

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The system assesses a building through four disciplines: architectural, mechanical, electrical, and landscape.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In case you didn’t know, the bulk of a building’s overall cost doesn’t<\/em> come from its initial construction. If you measure the total cost over the lifespan of the typical building, anywhere from 60 to 80 per cent of the cost comes from maintenance. Very inefficient designs can even cost more in maintenance than it initially cost to build.<\/p>\n

Fixing this issue is actually one of the components addressed under Singapore Real Estate Industry Transformation Map<\/a>; it’s just that not many in the property sales industry noticed it, because it’s on the construction and design side.<\/p>\n

How is this different from the previous system?<\/h3>\n

In the previous system, there wasn’t much emphasis on long term maintenance cost. This was a gap between the initial builders and later facility maintenance bodies. For example, once a developer is done with your condo, future maintenance is an issue for the MCST<\/a>. Your condo’s original architect very rarely has anything to do with the development afterward.<\/p>\n

Because of this, the initial builders may have more immediate priorities like aesthetics (how do you sell a condo that looks bad?), or cheaper construction cost (the developer pays for construction; it doesn’t pay for maintenance later down the road).<\/p>\n

We’re not accusing any and all developers of this; we’re just pointing out that that the system inclined<\/em> them to think that way.<\/p>\n

This resulted in issues like:<\/p>\n