- Maintenance team may have falsified records
- Switches failed, other pumps not working
- No Committee of Inquiry, no lapses by LTA
Khaw Boon Wan on MRT tunnel flooding saga: ‘It begins from the top’
In a statement delivered in Parliament, the Transport Minister details the underlying reasons behind the tunnel flooding incident, along with the punishments meted out and ensuing steps taken by authorities.
07 Nov 2017 01:17PM (Updated: 07 Nov 2017 01:25PM)
SINGAPORE: In the wake of SMRT’s tunnel flooding episode, the rail operator must assume responsibility and set things right because “it begins from the top”, said Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan on Tuesday (Nov 7).
He was delivering a ministerial statement in Parliament on the issues which have embroiled the rail operator since last month, when heavy rains flooded a tunnel at Bishan MRT station, disabling the North-South Line for more than 20 hours.
An internal probe uncovered falsification of maintenance records and yesterday SMRT announced disciplinary action against six staff along with an inquiry into another seven at managerial level.
These led to nearly a dozen Members of Parliament (MPs) tabling related questions for Mr Khaw to address.
“The tunnel flooding incident was preventable. It should not have happened,” he reiterated. “It was not due to any inadequacy in the design of flood prevention measures. Neither was it due to an extraordinary storm.
“It was due to poor maintenance and neglect of duties by the specific SMRT maintenance team responsible for the Bishan storm water sump pump system.”
“NOT BEEN MAINTAINED FOR MONTHS”
Mr Khaw explained how MRT tunnels are fully protected against flooding, primarily by the aforementioned sump pump system which collects storm water and pumps it out to external drains to prevent it from flowing into the tunnels.
“The flood protection system at Bishan has served us well for the last 30 years and is designed with a huge buffer,” he said. “However, the lack of maintenance, including the failure to check that sub-systems were in working condition, has led to this incident.”
Mr Khaw noted that all three pumps in the Bishan storm water sump pit were functional, along with each of the five float switches controlling the system. “Why these float switches failed to function normally on Oct 7 is a subject of the ongoing LTA investigation,” he said.
Still, based on SMRT’s findings, “it appears that the Bishan flood protection system had not been maintained for many months”, said Mr Khaw.
“Maintenance records were signed off and submitted for December last year, March this year and June this year. However, these records do not match any corresponding logs for track access and pump activation. No track access approvals were issued for preventive maintenance of the Bishan portal sump pumps on these three dates. Pump logs also showed that the pumps were not activated for these same dates, which were required as part of the maintenance procedures.”
“In other words, the maintenance records may have been falsified.”
“PUMPS AT KEMBANGAN, LAVENDER NOT SERVICEABLE”
The maintenance team responsible for Bishan’s flood protection system comprises a manager, an engineering supervisor and four other crew members, Mr Khaw revealed.
Three of these have been with SMRT for more than 20 years, with one employed for 28 years. Two were with SMRT for six and eight years. One had joined for a little over a year.
All six have been suspended, Mr Khaw stated.
Aside from Bishan, SMRT has found that two out of eight pumps at Kembangan and three out of four at Lavender - both tunnel portal locations - are not in serviceable condition.
Read more at
“That is life”, Mr Khaw Boon Wan is right after all
Published on 2017-11-07 by The Online Citizen
by Lee Siew Peng (Dr)
I was surprised that Mr Desmond Kuek took so long to say the recent SMRT troubles were due to ‘culture’.
If you look at the newspapers in the UK, you will notice how ‘culture’ is never an issue until something goes wrong, and then some senior person will be trotted out to point an accusing finger at this esoteric culprit called ‘culture’.
Culture is about life: social life in all its multi-faceted glory which encompasses beliefs, the way we work, the way we eat and sleep, the invisible factors that guide the way we choose life-partners, get married, stay married (or not) and have children. Scholars of culture try to understand how people-groups continue to behave in a certain manner: how society is reproduced.
If culture be the problem, then c’est la vie’ (that is life), Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan was right.
Never the twain/train
While teaching at National University of Singapore (NUS) many years ago, all engineering students had to attend sociology classes to learn how people behave. They hated it. (“Must I really deal with real people?”)
These were engineering students because they excelled in maths and physics, and dealing with inanimate objects and systems. Making them study how and why social phenomena could be understood through the eyes of Marx, Durkheim and Weber was equivalent to making me do calculus.
I love generating and analysing statistics, but calculus is a foreign country: l find it hard to integrate!
People matter
When engineers design roads, bridges and trains, they need an understanding of how people will use these to ensure the highest level of safety, comfort and purposefulness. Physical design can affect behaviour.
Some Ukrainian students I taught in Kiev explained how their universities had ‘designed out’ large spaces so that students could not meet in big groups, to reduce the threat of a popular uprising. (Just think of all those ‘squares’ in which millions have demonstrated their discontent.)
The ‘press here to continue’ button is normally on the bottom right-hand of a web page because we read English from left to right, top to bottom, and there’s where the eye comes to a rest. Culture encompasses language.
Even if engineers were to design only robots, the end-users are still human beings who must work and live with these robots!
continue reading here :
MRT tunnel flooding: No lapse in oversight by LTA which had ‘prioritised review of critical assets’
By Valerie Koh
Published: 2:25 PM, November 7, 2017
SINGAPORE – The Land Transport Authority (LTA) had prioritised reviewing the condition of critical operating assets - such as the trains and the signalling system - over other assets, including the Bishan pump system which was at fault for the flooding incident last month.
The rest of the assets were scheduled to be assessed from later this year, in a review conducted as part of the LTA’s acquisition of rail operating assets under the New Rail Financing Framework last year, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan told the House on Tuesday (Nov 7) as Parliament held an inquest into the Oct 7 flooding incident at Bishan MRT station which caused severe train disruptions.
Responding to a raft of questions filed by several Members of Parliament, Mr Khaw elaborated in a ministerial statement on his written answer to Parliament a day earlier where he said there had been no lapse in oversight by the LTA.
Workers’ Party Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (MP) Dennis Tan, for example, questioned the LTA’s oversight over the inspection, repair or replacement of equipment. Bukit Batok MP Murali Pillai also asked how the LTA balanced its regulatory role with its role as system owner working with operators as a team to resolve problems.
In his statement, Mr Khaw said the LTA played three “distinct roles” as regulator, developer and asset owner for the rail network. “Although these roles are separate, they are all geared towards achieving our vision for a well-connected, reliable and efficient rail network,” he said.
As regulator, LTA sets operating and maintenance performance standards. It also conducts regular audits of operators’ maintenance regime and on-site inspections to ensure that standards are met. A risk-based approach is adopted to prioritise resources, said Mr Khaw. Critical areas where failure could have severe impact – such as the signaling system – are given the greatest attention in terms of audit and regulatory focus.
“The anti-flooding systems are considered less risky compared to other core railway systems, because the constructs are simpler, easier to maintain and have ample engineering buffers,” Mr Khaw said.
In a meeting with MRT on Sept 29, a week before the flooding incident, the LTA had emphasised the maintenance of the pump systems, and SMRT had agreed to collate a list of pumps requiring replacement that would be handed to the LTA.
“There have been no shortcomings or lapses in oversight by LTA staff in the present regulatory framework,” said Mr Khaw. “However, no regulatory oversight can fully guard against intentional efforts to hide mistakes and negligence.”
As developer, LTA ensures that transport infrastructure is designed with the right specifications. “In this case, the design and construction of our MRT infrastructure have incorporated ample flood-resistant specifications and redundancies,” said Mr Khaw.
For instance, station entrances are built at least one metre above prevailing flood levels, and there are ample pump capacity and holding tanks. These specifications are more stringent than those for other building developments, he pointed out.
continue reading here :
http://www.todayonline.com/singapore...ritical-assets
But then how do you explain the numerous breakdowns that SMRT is facing other than the flooding issue ?
Or you choose to ignore other issues ???
Khaw: SMRT CEO Desmond Kuek wasn’t parachuted into the job, he volunteered for it
Khaw also compared Singapore’s MRT to Hong Kong’s MTR system.
By Sulaiman Daud | 11 mins
Desmond Kuek, the SMRT CEO under fire for not turning around the problematic company culture after more than five years, received some recognition for his efforts in transforming the company.
Well, sort of.
In Parliament on Nov. 7, Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan described him as someone who has “his heart in the right place”.
In remarks that were not included in his Ministerial Statement, Khaw shed some light on the circumstances behind Kuek’s appointment, and revealed that he volunteered for the job.
“I know he has been working very hard to try to change work culture. Let me share a little secret about, I don’t know whether he make public. 2012 you know, when…2011 was the last major disruption and then the SMRT decided to remove their previous CEO.
Mr Desmond Kuek volunteered for this job. He volunteered for this job, he wasn’t parachuted in or being asked to go and fix this. He volunteered for this job. I mean as former Chief of Defence force, I know, I think his heart is in the right place. He’s proud to be a Singaporean, and we all felt ashamed by these, you know, every now and then disruptions in SMRT.”
Q\Kuek took over as SMRT CEO in Oct. 2012. He replaced Saw Phaik Hwa, who resigned in Jan. 2012 following two major train disruptions in Dec. 2011.
In 2016, Kuek received a pay cut of 20 per cent, although SMRT did not reveal the reason for it.
Speaking candidly, Khaw also mentioned how he compared Singapore’s situation with Hong Kong.
“Many of us, I mean I’m an engineer, I have many engineering friends, and we really feel embarrassed, for a long time. I don’t know if I should say so, but for a long time we’ve always compared ourselves with Hong Kong, we’re far ahead of them as engineers. And when their MRT’s running much better than our MRT, it’s terrible.”
Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system has been routinely compared to Singapore’s MRT.
continue reading here :
All you need to know about Khaw Boon Wan’s massive Ministerial Statement on the MRT tunnel flood
A Committee of Inquiry will not be convened.
By Sulaiman Daud | 2 mins
To no one’s surprise, the hottest topic for the November session of Parliament was the MRT flooding incident that occurred on Oct. 7.
No less than ten MRT-related questions were submitted by various MPs, and Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan addressed them all in a single, super-long Ministerial Statement.
Here’s what you need to know from his nearly 4,500-word statement, as prepared for delivery.
Apparently, internal investigations have found that the maintenance team responsible for Bishan’s flood protection system had signed off on maintenance records for Dec. 2016, March 2017 and June 2017. But the team didn’t ask for track access during those dates – and you’ll need to apply for track access if you want to go down and check the storm tank in the first place.
According to Khaw:
“No track access approvals were issued for preventive maintenance of the Bishan portal sump pumps on these dates. Pump logs also showed that the pumps were not activated for these same dates, which is required as part of the maintenance procedures. In other words, the maintenance records may have been falsified.”
This begs the question, is there someone at SMRT responsible for cross-checking that the maintenance records are backed up by track access logs?
The maintenance team responsible for Bishan have been suspended and are “assisting” SMRT’s investigation.
As previously reported, the pumps attached to the storm tank at Bishan MRT station were found to be working fine. However, the switches that were supposed to be activated when the water reached a certain level failed.
During his press conference on Oct. 16, Khaw said that the LTA was conducting an investigation into why the switches failed. That investigation is still on-going.
The SMRT investigation also turned up non-functional pumps at Kembangan and Lavender Station. The people responsible for the pumps, from SMRT’s Building and Facilities maintenance group, have also been suspended while SMRT carries out its investigations.
Although some of SMRT’s investigations are on-going, as are the LTA investigations, Khaw stated that a Committee of Inquiry will not be convened.
“While investigations by LTA will take a few more weeks to complete, the facts of the 7 October incident are not complicated, and the cause of the incident is clear. My Ministry will therefore not be convening a Committee of Inquiry.”
Khaw also added that there were no shortcoming or lapses in oversight by LTA staff in the present regulatory framework.
LTA had met with SMRT on Sept. 29, just a few days before the incident. During the meeting, LTA stressed the importance of proper maintenance for the tunnel pump systems.
SMRT agreed to review the pumps and report malfunctioning ones to LTA, but it was too late.
continue reading here :
Low Thia Khiang asks how can SMRT, MOT & LTA work as one. Khaw Boon Wan says it sounds schizo but can be done.
Lesson on how to score political points.
By Chan Cheow Pong |Guan Zhen Tan | November 7, 2017
Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan was in parliament today to deliver a Ministerial Statement on the MRT flooding incident on Oct. 7.
Now, we all know that he is a very colourful and quotable minister, and we can always count on him to deliver the soundbites to help address the complex issues that he oversees.
Scoring political points
His exchange with Workers’ Party Secretary General and Aljunied GRC MP Low Thia Khiang in the house today once again proves why his younger colleagues in the Cabinet and PAP will have much to learn when it comes to the art of thinking on their feet, and scoring political points.
Low basically made two points when seeking clarifications from Khaw:
•SMRT is a profit-seeking entity of the government
•With LTA, MOT and SMRT working together as a team, there will no longer be checks and balances
And Khaw’s rejoinder? Well, he took the opportunity to rebut Low and turned it into a chance to remind everyone about Low’s town council troubles.
Here are some of his most colourful points:
•SMRT does not seek to make money for government
“There are easier ways to make money. You don’t have to use SMRT to make money.”
•There is a need to have financial discipline while providing public services
“Making money is not your objective, but you must not lose money. There must be financial discipline. Cannot just anyhow go and spend money, buy this, buy that, gold plate everything -and then, of course, you can have a marvellous operation and so on, but at great cost to who? It’ll be to the taxpayers.”
•Working as one team can still have checks and balances
“So that I think yeah it may sound to him as schizo(phrenic), but we are quite clear in our mind and it can be done.”
continue reading here :
https://mothership.sg/2017/11/low-th...t-can-be-done/
That is why Khaw does not want to punish SMRT he rather blame it on the workers . Ownself check ownself . So you still want to vote for PAP ?
Steps to plug holes in SMRT as questions over tunnel flooding remain
Christopher Tan
Senior Transport Correspondent
SINGAPORE - Thirty years ago to the day (Nov 7, 1987), Singapore’s MRT system started operations, making the Republic the first South-east Asian country to have a metro.
But the mood in Parliament on Tuesday was far from celebratory, dampened as it were by an unprecedented tunnel flooding at Bishan station which crippled a large part of the North-south line on Oct 7 and 8.
A good half of the sitting was devoted to soul-searching on why SMRT - Singapore’s dominant rail operator - does not seem capable of getting things right in recent years.
On top of answering piercing questions ranging from worker morale to human resource management to SMRT’s now infamous “deep-seated cultural issues”, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan delivered a 39-paragraph ministerial statement which focused on what caused the tunnel flooding, and what actions have been taken since.
Mr Khaw said there was no need for a formal public inquiry, as the cause of the flooding - which he described repeatedly as “sad” and “embarrassing” - was clearly attributable to maintenance lapses on the part of SMRT.
It was not because of any inadequacy in the design of flood protection measures, he said.
Yet, he revealed that the sump pit pumps at Bishan station have now been upgraded to models which can handle silt and sludge better. And importantly, the pumps will now be controlled by parallel float switches for better system redundancy.
This was to overcome the current weakness in the system, where a switch to protect the pumps from operating at low-water levels overrode the other float switches.
Even though each of the three pumps had its own float switch, this fourth switch detects low water levels to prevent the pumps from overheating when there is little or no water in the reservoir.
This override switch was the one found to have failed to kick in on Oct 7, preventing the others from activating the pumps.
The system would have been more robust if the fourth “stop” switch was removed, and each individual pump had its own low-water cut-off. Many modern pumps have this in-built feature.
Why it failed to do so is still a mystery. In fact, Mr Khaw said all the pumps and float switches at Bishan were also found to be in working order after the incident. He said it will take the Land Transport Authority a few more weeks to finish its investigations.
continue reading here :
Parliament: Train service hours on North-South, East-West lines likely to be cut to give engineers more time
Published 4 hours ago
Adrian Lim
Transport Correspondent
SINGAPORE - Train operating hours on the North-South and East-West lines (NSEWL) will likely be shortened - including on weekdays - to give rail engineers more time to replace and upgrade the lines’ ageing assets.
This was suggested by Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan in Parliament on Tuesday (Nov 7), as he delivered a ministerial statement to address recent lapses in SMRT’s maintenance regime.
Mr Khaw said this will “squeeze out more engineering hours” and help the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and SMRT “speed up” projects to renew core components on the 30-year-old NSEWL.
The upgrading has reached approximately its half-way point and will last until 2024, Mr Khaw added.
“Until all these key ageing systems are replaced or renewed, the NSEWL remains at risk of major disruptions, even with diligent maintenance,” he warned.
He drew an analogy between his heart operation eight years ago and the upgrading of the ageing rail assets, saying his cardiologist had advised him that if he did not bite the bullet and fix his heart problem with a bypass, he was at risk of falling dead.
continue reading here :
http://www.straitstimes.com/politics...be-cut-to-give
How to can you seek consumers understanding when every time there is a breakdown in mrt services your commuters will be late for their work ; school and appointments. How can you expect us to trust YOU to provide your commuters with a safe and reliable transport service ? At the rate it is going we might as well cycle to work . You think it is fair to your commuters Mr Khaw ?
Those 2 jokers had ample time to fix what is wrong at SMRT but it doesn’t seemed to be any better despite the LTA taking over the assets of the rail and bus industries . So how Mr Khaw ?
Khaw Boon Wan goes off script during ministerial statement on MRT flooding issue: “If there is poor work culture, the CEO is responsible.”
November 7, 2017
Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan threw SMRT CEO Desmond Kuek under the bus, as he faced a barrage of 15 questions pertaining to the 7 Oct Bishan tunnel flooding incident and subsequent 20-hour North-South Line breakdown.
In his ministerial statement in parliament today, the 64-year-old Minister called the first ever MRT station flooding in Singapore’s history “preventable.
He further confirmed that the incident that inconvenienced a quarter of a million commuters occurred “due to poor maintenance and neglect of duties” by an SMRT maintenance team. The staff team was found to have falsified paperwork that relevant maintenance works were completed when no work had been carried out.
The Minister then asserted:
“It is the responsibility of management to set the right culture, professionalism, and excellence. It begins from the top and if there is poor work culture, the CEO is responsible. You set the corporate culture… growing the right culture is the responsibility of everyone.”
Khaw was alluding to SMRT group CEO Desmond Kuek’s comments at a recent press conference that despite progress, the company grapples with “some deep-seated cultural issues within the company that has needed more time than anticipated to root out.”
continue reading here :
http://www.theindependent.sg/khaw-bo...s-responsible/
It is time to get a new CEO .
Mysteries remain amid the soul-searching on SMRT operations
Christopher Tan
Senior Transport Correspondent
Published 4 hours ago
Thirty years ago to the day - Nov 7, 1987 - Singapore’s MRT system started operations, making the Republic the first South-east Asian country to have a metro. But the mood in Parliament yesterday was far from celebratory, dampened as it were by an unprecedented tunnel flooding at Bishan station which crippled a large part of the North-South Line on Oct 7 and 8.
A good half of the sitting was devoted to soul-searching on why SMRT - Singapore’s dominant rail operator - has not been getting things right in recent years.
On top of answering piercing questions ranging from worker morale to human resource management to SMRT’s now infamous “deep-seated cultural issues”, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan delivered a 39-paragraph ministerial statement which focused on what caused the tunnel flooding and what actions have been taken since.
Mr Khaw said there was no need for a formal public inquiry, as the cause of the flooding - which he described repeatedly as “sad” and “embarrassing” - was clearly attributable to maintenance lapses on the part of SMRT.
It was not because of any inadequacy in the design of flood protection measures, he said.
Yet, he revealed that the sump pit pumps at Bishan station have now been upgraded to models which can handle silt and sludge better. And as importantly, the pumps will now be controlled by parallel float switches for better system redundancy. This was to overcome the current weakness in the system, where a switch to protect the pumps from operating at low water levels overrode the other float switches.
Even though each of the three pumps had its own float switch, this fourth switch detects low water levels to prevent the pumps from overheating when there is little or no water in the reservoir.
This override switch was the one found to have failed on Oct 7, preventing the others from activating the pumps.
The system would have been more robust if the fourth “stop” switch had been removed, and each individual pump had its own low-water cut-off. Many modern pumps have this in-built feature.
Why the override switch failed is still a mystery. In fact, Mr Khaw said all the pumps and float switches at Bishan were also found to be in working order after the incident. He said it will take the Land Transport Authority a few more weeks to finish its investigations.
continue reading here :
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapor...soul-searching
Another big wayang show .
Still want to vote for PAP ?