Elevators & Outdoor Learning/Adventure Education: More in common than you think

[Originally posted on Facebook, 22 Aug 2016]



I read with interest the report on the trials and tribulations facing Singapore’s lift industry. [http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/trapped-manpower-crunch-lift-industry-need-hoist]

In the following paragraphs, I pull out relevant excerpts that I believe very much applies to the Outdoor Learning and Adventure Education industry in Singapore.

Mr Quah Eng Hing, secretary of the Singapore Lift & Escalator Contractors & Manufacturers Association (Slecma) was quoted (in part) as saying: “We have difficulty recruiting local manpower for lift maintenance because local people, especially the young people, shun this kind of job.”

Certainly, the hours are long and the burden of responsibility is high for any young person who has worked as a camp instructor or facilitator providing programmes that can last 3 days with participants numbering up to 200 or even 300. The key difference here is that such camp instructors or facilitators don’t get overtime pay.

Professor Lim Mong King, who until 2010 was deputy chairman of the Singapore Standards Council, a body that pushes for standards development, said lift maintenance was a “high-skilled” profession but technicians could be “easily trained”, and the onus was on the authorities to build up this pool of workers to meet demand.

It is interesting that he places the ‘onus’ on the authorities and I would be most interested to see how the Singapore Standards Council and MOM could come in to render assistance in developing our industry.

Amid a growing number of lifts across the island, the technician-to-lift ratio in some lift companies is on the rise. A director in a major lift manufacturing company here...said one technician handled up to 30 lifts now, inching up from about 27 lifts about a decade ago.Meanwhile, at Ken-Jo Industries, one service technician attends to between 50 and 60 lifts, said its managing director Kenneth Lim.

We sometimes face similar pressures too, with the result that trainers and facilitators get fatigued and hence the risk of incidents or accidents goes up. And yet, the clients who use our services don’t seem to appreciate or understand the need to adequately pay for them.

Speaking in Parliament last month, National Development Minister Lawrence Wong said that beyond tighter regulations, “it is also important for lift companies to build up their capabilities, and have competent technicians and engineers doing the work”. BCA is working with the industry to set clearer requirements on the scope and level of training for all lift personnel,” he said. It is also developing a sectoral plan, which will, among other things, look into the need for better-defined career-development paths to attract and retain more skilled lift professionals.

This definitely applies to us in the Outdoor Learning and Adventure Education industry too.

Prof Lim felt that the BCA was probably not cognisant of the scale of the manpower woes facing lift contractors and that some lift owners might not have been taking lift maintenance seriously. Adding that the BCA must tread carefully in regulating the sector, he said that coming up with prescriptive measures would not help; rather, it was crucial to impress the importance of “ownership” upon lift owners and contractors, so they assume responsibility for shoddy maintenance work. Good practices must be inculcated so parties “take their jobs seriously” to ensure public safety, he said: “This sort of culture has to be passed on rather than just a long list of regulatory requirements.”

Agree - but the last thing we need is to over-regulate or bureaucratise to such an extent that compliance becomes onerous (both cost and time wise) and the incentive to cut corners becomes stronger.

Ken-Jo Industries’ Mr Lim told TODAY that his service technicians work an average of three to four hours more daily than they did about a decade ago, but within Manpower Ministry guidelines. The firm has about 20 service technicians and two supervisors servicing nearly 1,000 lifts, with each technician handling up to four lifts a day. With more jobs crammed into a workday, he said technicians typically have to work long hours, frequently putting in overtime, resulting in a high turnover rate.

The high turnover rate is something faced by companies in our industry too, with the result that experience is hard to reward or retain.

[Mr Lim] noted that should lift companies increase their headcount, they would have to pass the costs on to the clients but this is not feasible with clients insisting on “lower maintenance fees”.

To be fair, clients don’t often pressure service providers to lower their fees year after year - conversely, they seem to overlook the fact that fees have to keep pace with inflation (at the very least).

Mr Zaqy disagreed, however, saying that lift maintenance fees were on the rise and authorised engineers were also charging more now, on the back of tightened standards. Town councils, he noted, appointed lift contractors through open tenders and companies place low bids to out-price the competition. “Because they rely on foreign manpower ... they think they can bid low so they try to out-cut each other (and) what results is competition based on price, as opposed to competition based on innovation or creativity, and reliability and standards,” he said.

GeBIZ, I’m looking at you. The phrase “the lowest quote will not necessarily be awarded” is merely paying lip service to attempting to consider other criteria for selection other than pricing. The reality is that not many teachers, project managers, training officers are willing or able to sit down to write a lengthy ‘justification’ why the lowest quoted bidder was not going to be selected. And in this climate of ‘financial prudence’? Innovation and creativity have taken an indefinite sabbatical.

Mr Radali said he believed the low basic salary was a key contributor to attrition, with four of his close colleagues heading to other fields, such as chemical petroleum and aviation. He has seen his monthly salary increase by S$700 over the eight years that he has been with his company. Factoring in overtime pay, he earns up to S$3,000 a month — more than 1.5 times his basic salary. “Lift line people normally need overtime (pay), because our basic pay is not that marvellous,” he said. Slecma’s Mr Quah reiterated that the industry could pay workers better and attract more to the sector if lift owners paid contractors more. He noted owners’ resistance to even slight maintenance fee increases of up to 5 per cent. Noting that lifts are a big part of people’s daily lives, he said: “Since it’s so important, lift owners should cherish this industry, then pay more and you get a better lift, better workers, more workers.” Urging lift owners to consider “the lives” of users, Mr Quah added: “If (it were their) car, they are very concerned ... So I think this is very unfair ... Don’t just look at the price (and) try to get a cheaper price at the expense of the lift user.”

Let me try my version: “If it were your child/student/employee, you [would be] very concerned...So I think this is very unfair...Don’t just look at the price and try to get a cheaper price for the camp’s or programme’s participants.”