Singapore Outlines New Productivity Roadmap For Landscape Industry
Speech by Teo Chee Hean, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence at Green Thumbs 2010 on 4 September 2010 at Pasir Ris Park.
Dr Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of National Development
Mrs Christina Ong, Chairman, National Parks Board
Mr Michael Teh, Chairman, Landscape Industry Association of Singapore
Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen, A very good afternoon to all of you:
We are here today to celebrate the development journey of Singapore’s landscape industry.
Through concerted efforts to improve productivity, the landscape industry now offers rewarding new career opportunities for those with the interest and aptitude.
Green Thumbs 2010 offers an excellent opportunity for Singaporeans and prospective job seekers to better understand the industry and the business and employment opportunities available.
It also provides a platform for the industry to showcase its multi-disciplinary capabilities, and brings together leading practitioners from the region to share best practices.
Role of Singapore’s Landscape Industry
With good planning and focused execution over many years, Singapore has attained global branding as a Garden City where lush greenery, parks and green spaces pervade our urban landscape. Singaporeans now enjoy a high quality living environment.
This has also given us a competitive advantage in attracting talent and investments to our shores. All these could not have been achieved without the sustained efforts and contributions of our landscape industry.
The landscape industry is expected to grow at a rate of 4% to 6% annually over the next five years. The two Integrated Resorts, Gardens by the Bay, the Park Connector Network, and the Active, Beautiful and Clean (or ABC) Waters Programme are just some of the many projects that will require landscaping services.
Just take a look around Singapore and you will appreciate the hard work that our landscape professionals have tirelessly put in to turn Singapore into the lush tropical urban oasis that it is today.
The Landscape Industry’s Productivity Journey
This new wave of growth presents a good opportunity for the industry to further innovate, and enhance its productivity and professionalism. NParks recently presented its productivity roadmap for the landscape industry to the National Productivity and Continuing Education Council (NPCEC), which I chair. NParks had taken a comprehensive and holistic approach, and demonstrated a good understanding of the key productivity gaps and “bottlenecks” in the landscape industry, including studying how the same work activities were carried out in other countries.
The roadmap was able to come up with clear productivity strategies to address these challenges. More importantly, the initiatives had buy-in and support from industry players and the unions. The Council endorsed NPark’s plans and it would be instructive to share NParks’ productivity journey with you as an example of how the private sector, public sector and unions can work together to improve productivity.
Early Productivity Efforts
Even before the recommendations of the Economic Strategies Committee (ESC), NParks had been working with industry and stakeholders to encourage productivity improvement. NParks had collaborated with NTUC in areas such as job placement, improving the image of the industry, raising productivity awareness and productivity benchmark studies. In 2007, NParks collaborated with the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to set up the Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology (or CUGE in short).
CUGE is currently the only Continuing Education and Training (or CET) Centre for the landscape industry, and has trained more than 2,700 local workers (or 25% of the total local workforce). Of these, about 35% have achieved the Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) Certificate in Landscape Operations.
One example of workers who benefited from the training is Ms Ng Mui Hua, who started working with TEHC International in February last year after being in a desk-bound job for many years. She obtained a WSQ Certificate in Landscape Operations and started work as a skilled landscape technician, earning slightly more than a $1,000 per month. Through hard work and because of her positive attitude, she was recently promoted to the post of Project Assistant with a salary increment of about 40%. Her employer intends to send her for the WSQ Higher Certificate in Landscape Operations for the Arboriculture specialisation later this year to further hone her landscape skills.
Benchmarking Study
A key milestone in NParks’ productivity journey was a productivity benchmarking study that it undertook in 2009, in which NParks compared the landscape maintenance work practices in Singapore with those in Australia and Thailand. More than 50 key work processes were identified for benchmarking, such as the number of labour hours required to prune a tree using a travel tower and the number of labour hours required to fertilise each hectare of a sportsfield.
This benchmarking exercise revealed that although our landscape companies were more productive than many of our neighbours, we fell short when compared to Australia. In fact, Australia’s landscape companies were 3 to 4 times more productive than Singapore for some work processes! The study broke down the abstract concept of productivity into specific work processes and performance indicators that everybody could understand and see clearly where there was room for improvement.
Communication with Industry
NParks went on to share these findings with industry players. Beyond engaging landscape companies through local seminars, NParks also organised a productivity study trip to Australia for landscape companies, for them to witness and learn from the productivity practices in Australia’s landscape industry and how far Singapore was lagging.
The study trip changed mindsets and many of these industry players came back convinced, and motivated to take action to improve their productivity. One of the companies – Kiat Lee Landscape and Building, took a great leap forward after the trip.
It decided to improve HR practices and introduced salary increment incentives for workers with good performance. The company also invested in high-tech machinery, such as the mini excavator and aerial lift, to improve productivity. Clearly, galvanising industry support for productivity improvements was crucial as NParks could not go at it alone.
Landscape Industry Productivity Roadmap
With the findings from the benchmarking study and the support of the industry, NParks then proceeded to develop its roadmap to improve productivity in the landscape industry. This roadmap has been endorsed by the NPCEC, and will receive support from the National Productivity Fund to raise productivity in the landscape industry.
I will leave NParks to announce the full details of the roadmap, but I want to highlight that the key initiatives in NParks’ plan go beyond what companies would naturally do on their own to improve their productivity and profitability. Instead, NParks has rightly focused on changing the mindset of industry players so that they can help themselves; and then put in place processes that will help companies and the sector make the necessary structural shifts. Let me elaborate on two aspects.
Up-skilling Workers
First, NParks aims to not just raise the skill levels of the industry workforce, but also to instill a sense of pride and professionalism into every worker so he or she will do a better job and continue to think of ways to improve his or her work. This sense of pride will allow the industry to maintain a core pool of skilled and experienced workers who will anchor and retain expertise within the industry and fuel further productivity improvements.
Specifically, NParks is in partnership with WDA to study how new initiatives like an apprenticeship scheme can be introduced to develop and equip younger workers with technical competencies from an early age, and to build managerial skills as they progress within the industry.
Through this scheme, workers will see their salaries increase as they become more skilled. More importantly, this apprenticeship scheme will help to professionalise landscape jobs and make our younger workers more excited about a long-term career in the landscape industry. Ultimately, this sense of passion and professionalism will be crucial in creating a positive productivity mindset and culture amongst the landscape workforce.
Restructuring the Industry
Second, at the company level, NParks recognises that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) which make up the majority of companies in the industry will need help to make structural shifts, such as mechanisation where it makes sense. I saw the TEHC International’s modified lorry crane just now. It is a 3-in-1 integrated system for tree pruning which is more flexible, safer and requires less manpower to operate.
Such equipment can free up workers to carry out other tasks, thereby improving the efficiency of work processes. But for many SMEs, there is a very real hurdle of large capital investments. NParks recognises this challenge, and that it may not be productive or cost-effective for each and every SME to invest in a range of equipment to mechanise various processes. So it is facilitating an equipment leasing programme that will enable SMEs to leverage on technology to increase productivity.
Other structural issues which NParks will seek to address include buyer-contract partnerships as well as development of management and human resource capabilities.
Conclusion
It is clear that NParks has taken a systematic and thorough look at productivity in the landscape industry. This approach has helped both NParks and its stakeholders to recognise and understand the productivity challenges that landscape companies face, and to develop appropriate strategies together to tackle these challenges.
It is thus important to have groups like the Singapore Landscape Industry Council (SLIC) and the Landscape Industry Association of Singapore (LIAS) to champion excellence in the landscape industry and to promote continuous improvement in skills, work procedures and business practices in the industry.
With the support and active participation of the industry, I am confident that the NParks’ productivity roadmap for the landscape industry will contribute to the landscape industry’s competitiveness and productivity in the medium to long term. I would urge all other sectors of our economy to learn from NParks’ example, and make productivity improvement a key focus of their work over the long haul.
With that, I wish the industry every success in your productivity journey ahead. Thank you.
Topics: 2010, ABC, Active Beautiful and Clean Waters Program, Defence, defense, DPM Teo, economic development, economic growth, Economy, employment, Garden City, Gardens by the Bay, Governance, government, Green Thumbs 2010, jobs, Landscape Industry Productivity Roadmap, landscaping, landscapre industry, moniter, monitor, news, NParks, Park Connector Network, society, Teo Chee Hean, Urban Greenery and Ecology, urban oasis
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