Course + Year: NUS Project & Facilities Management Y3
PFM is in NUS’s School of Design and Environment. Project Management is about managing projects: like managing a shop (e.g paying rent, ensuring profitability, customer satisfaction) – but on a much, much larger scale. Facilities Management teaches you how to become a facility manager. It’s related to M&E systems where you learn lighting, plumbing and other more grounded skills to identify and fix issues in complex office buildings or shopping malls.
JC. I took GAEM!
I think my circumstances differ from the conventional student. Part of my decision was nostalgia because my family was in the industry for quite awhile and was a part of some of SG’s more notable buildings. But ultimately, I chose it as a safe, reliable option to fall back on: it’s the type of course where you know there will be a consistent amount of demand for!
In terms of interest, I had honestly taken into account FASS/Real Estate and even considered transferring out of PFM during my first year since my grades were rather good. But I settled into PFM because it is more grounded, and the industry is something quite some people would usually avoid, so I felt that it was a good safety net if whichever career path I chose doesn’t work out. (Be it finance, hedge funds, capital markets, REITs, etc).
However, for a significant majority of people in PFM, there’s a high probability that they listed PFM as a backup plan, but the failure to make an educated choice is the first step towards their downfall (they feel like they’re slogging through 4 years of their life and their results suffer too).
While I understand that a degree is important and you might want to just take the degree, the ramifications are quite severe. Later down the line, the sector will not contain great talent or suffer from insufficient manpower shortages simply because the graduates that come from these courses never had an interest in them. That’s my main worry for people deciding on PFM as a backup plan without fully understanding the course. My advice would be to read this, so that you understand fully what you are committing to as a PFM graduate!
SUSS offers this degree; however they do it in a rather strange fashion. They split Project Management and Facilities Management into 2 seperate degrees. So you can view NUS as offering in technicality 2 degrees in one!
Nope, I do not need scholarships as I am financially stable. I think scholarships can be a double-edged sword. They’re good because you can get a job out of graduation (and possibly be on an express stream in your career), but you might be stuck with a low pay throughout the duration of your bond – and it might hold you down. So think VERY carefully before taking it, and check your future employer. It may or may not be worth it.
You can look out for the:
Word of mouth is that the iBuild Scholarship is easier to get than government scholarships (like the BCA scholarship).
The course structure is broken up into several branches, and these are:
Before you’re allowed to graduate, you will be exposed to each of these branches. Y1-2 makes up the bulk of essentials, so after that you can choose mods based on interest in professor/content!
PM modules teach you the essence of managing projects, time management, cost management, stakeholder management, and so on. Think of it as managing a shop: what would you need? You would need to make sure you pay the rent, ensure that the shop is profitable, that the customers are happy, etc. Except, it’s on a much larger scale.
FM essentially teaches you how to become a facility manager. It’s related to M&E systems where you learn lighting, plumbing and other more grounded skills to identify and fix issues.
FM is NOT condominium management – it’s often for complex office buildings or shopping malls. However, it’s most commonly for HDB town council management (some graduates do go there for a career).
Technology modules range from BIM, to learning CS1101 (programming). It’s largely to do with computer devices and gives graduates some exposure to them. However, it’s comparatively lacking in depth unless you are willing to go the extra mile and learn during your own free time.
In PFM, you don’t have a specialisation: you select the modules you want to emphasise on. You may take the minimum requirements to fulfill graduation requirements (e.g. 12MCs from FM/8 MCs for Technology) and within each branch, allows some flexibility in choosing what you are really interested in within each basket. So most undergrads from PFM don’t actually come out with the same skill set. Some may have experience in X while some have experience in Y.
You can think of it as a “path” that would determine your future career, but it trains you for work and alleviates the need from your future employer. For example, if you weigh heavily into PM, you can still graduate and apply to FM companies with few issues, the only thing would be that you may need to settle for on-the-job training (OJT) instead. Ultimately, it is up to you to sell yourself during interviews.
From past track records PFM has not been a very popular course. However, discussions with the department are already on-going. By the time you see this, there’s a high likelihood that the cut-off points have been raised, and there’s more screening for candidates to make sure that the people who undertake the course actually want to join the PM/FM industry. If someone was just taking PFM in the hopes of just getting a degree, I’d say the chances are decreasing with time.
PFM is one of the more flexible courses in NUS that one can undertake, and some people may think of working while studying due to this flexibility. However, the projects for PFM do consume a large amount of your time. Thus, students who choose to juggle both work and school tend to be under a tremendous amount of stress and might inflict trouble on their group mates due to their work schedule! If one wishes to work while in PFM, they should opt for a job with a very high degree of flexibility in terms of timing.
Free-time galore. Be prepared for a lot of free time. If you thought that it would be anything similar to the JC studying period of 8-6pm daily, you will be in for a shock. Each module in PFM consists of only 1 lecture per week and 1x tutorial every 2 weeks. That adds up to only 4.5 hours of school attendance for 2 weeks for 1 module. The standard is to take 5 modules, which adds up to 22.5 hours for 2 weeks, averaging at 1.6 hours a day.
However, this free-time excludes studying and reading up on materials that you need to familiarise yourself with in order to score. Thus, time management is critical if you want to do well. Also, there are a lot of projects so free time will get eaten up if members of your group slack off.
The professors here are fantastic, and are some of the best in the industry! They have a long string of resumes that have well known firms and projects that they were involved in (think MBS, CBD buildings). Take your time to ask them questions about their time in the industry, and they will have stories to tell!
Scenario-based projects. For example, you would think about how to manage the construction of a Condominium, Hotel or how you would build a hypothetical green building. There is flexibility given to you to make assumptions in order to spice up the projects, but they can sometimes be a bit dry.
Some projects by good professors will really push you to research day and night on interesting topics. One such project was when my group settled upon the idea of attempting to propose a solution to prevent Singapore from sinking due to rising sea level.
PFM has A LOT of writing; your English must be good enough to convey your thoughts and ideas.
Project & Facilities Management is essentially a degree course that comprises three parts, Project Management, Facilities Management and Quantity Surveyors.
These 3 jobs cater around the Built Environment sector within Singapore – it’s essentially the construction sector. I will go through 3 of the jobs in detail, and one newer role that the degree lets you pursue.
A quantity surveyor is essentially a person that does something called “taking off”. This is the measurement of building quantities from a floor plan.
Let’s say you are given a house – you’ll have to calculate the required amount of cement needed for the floor and then use it to calculate the cost of the entire concrete floor.
In other countries, the quantity surveyor is also called the Cost Engineer. Before the construction phase, you will be the one that handles clients and controls components of a building to ensure they meet the budgetary requirements. The “Tendering Stage” is the most stressful; this is the stage where a developer (a company or maybe a very wealthy person) calls for many building contractors for tender to construct whatever it may be. (This can be a condominium, mall, house, office, etc.) During this stage, quantity surveyors will have to put in many hours in order to meet the tender deadline to sort of “bid” for the job.
Usually, the job will go to whichever company has a good track record and has the lowest costs for construction.
A facilities manager (FM) will be managing a building after it has been built, such as a hospital, a condominium or a shopping mall. The buildings that have to be managed are usually large-scale buildings and not those more minor ones.
This job primarily consists of taking care of faults in the building, identifying the methods to fix them and calling up subcontractors to come and perform rectification works. They also come with proposing changes needed and calculating costs that are required to upkeep the building.
One notable FM company would be EM Services: it manages the town councils (HDB) blocks, ensuring that the water tank is cleaned, and so on.
FMs are currently in high demand, due to the fact that the amount of construction knowledge needed is immensely heavy in order to manage the building. Additionally, Project Managers (Main Con) are starting to shift away from Civil Engineers to Architects, which gives rise to a bunch of problems when the building is completed.
You can become a project manager for Developers, main contractors, or subcontractors. Note that other than being a project manager for subcontractors, becoming a PM for main contractors/developers is something that most graduates from the course will not become as per the current norm.
Those from Civil Engineering are heavily favoured upon for Project Managers due to the fact that they know every inch of the building as well as the mathematical calculations that are done to ensure the building is built safely. There are occasional cases where PFM graduates become PMs for main contractors, but that is only when they have undertaken being a Quantity Surveyor after many years. Main Contractors (for buildings, not renovation) highly prefer Civil Engineers to be Project Managers. Within these projects, you will need Qualified Persons, Civil Engineers, Architects, etc. to sign off on plans to be submitted to the PE board (Professional Engineers). In this case, a Civil Engineer would be able to handle the math and the other aspect of management.
A Developer builds your HDB/Condo, borrows money to finance the project and bids for the land. It is one of the best positions to get. Main contractor is used very loosely: usually if companies are the first to be approached by Developers, they would call themselves as such – and it can refer to anything. A PM for developers/main contractors is the inspector/boss of the entire project. A PM for Main Con is in charge of the entire construction at the site. They will handle and order workers to perform the works, ensure that regulations are met, ensure that works are completed on the spot, organize for piling works and so on. (They wear white helmets like Civil Engineers.)
Sub-Contractors are hired by Main Contractors when they need someone to be in charge of specific labour (e.g. tiling, steel roofing). A PM for subcontractors is a more viable career path to take. Subcontractors are different from main construction – subcontractors are involved with companies that do minor works like renovation works which we call (A&A, Alterations and Additions). You may think of them as your “contractors” as what is normally called by Singaporeans, except they usually handle larger scale commercial projects and not those or residential types.
BIM is Building Information Modelling. BIM is essentially Sketchup (sketching software), except with the ability to retain information of the building components and properties (such as the thickness of the wall, the different types of materials, etc.).
This is extremely helpful at the early stages of the construction process, where you will take the floor plans given to you, and create a comprehensive 3D model. With this 3D model, they are able to run tests which detect clashes and issues that may arise during the construction phase, such as clashing of water pipes and electrical works at the same area. This is a very lucrative career, where I have personally seen some graduates nab $4k as starting salary.
However, it is important to note that BIM is the hardest module in the course, and that it requires you to be extremely hardworking for it to pay off.
Civil Engineers do all the calculations for the building and are also on site when they are built. PFM undergrads that stay in this line of work will go under as a Quantity Surveyor/Cost Engineer. You will determine the financing of the building as well as how much it would cost to build the building, and also act as a lawyer in a sense regarding construction law to ensure that your boss is able to get the best contract agreements there are and manage claims or payments that are meant to be due.
The one thing that needs to be cautioned about the QS scope of work is that in Singapore, QS are largely foreigners as they are generally willing to take a lower pay scale as opposed to Singaporeans. Most of the NUS PFM undergrads that ever become QS usually end up in civil service either right out of graduation or after a few years in the private sector.
Consultant QS companies are quantity surveyor companies that either main contractors or developers outsource their work to. They will do all the calculations on-behalf of their client. These companies have a notoriously high turnover rate due to a deadly combination of very low salaries (2.6-2.8k) and severely long hours (imagine tendering everyday for people). Some seniors I’ve talked to said they don’t get to go home at night and work on both weekends. The people that do stay never stay long: there are some where the turnover rate is nearly 80% within 1 year.
The only reason people join these companies is because you will get to learn a lot, before jumping onto bigger gigs. If you want to join these companies, always ask for the pay and working hours, and jolly well stick to it, else you will burn out and throw in the towel very fast.
Public sector companies like LTA, HDB, BCA or JTC will hire PFM graduates, though you must have very good grades. Think First Class Honours. There are some that managed to get in with 2nd lower, but those are anomalies and you shouldn’t rely on them.
In Singapore, a fair amount of the construction companies are family businesses, which may not be as preferable for some individuals.
According to the Graduate Employment Survey, the pay hovers around $3,400 (for 2020).
While the pay may not seem very attractive, it has been highlighted to the department heads and they should make moves very soon to push the numbers up. I am quite optimistic of it happening!
Know that within PFM, or just Singapore in general, there will always be the top and the bottom in each sector. From my current understanding, many things are being pushed behind the scenes by government agencies to attract more locals to the sector. This includes raising wages for the most part to compete with Finance (which a sizable portion of the graduates from PFM/Civil Engineering end up going to). But things are looking great on the horizon. More information should be released this year.
Currently, talent in the industry is bleeding out quite fast. This is due to the fact that sentiment in the industry is not very positive due to the low amount of tenders going about. Singapore, is a small country and there can never be enough jobs to sustain everybody in the sector. Less money is circulating within the industry, if you read up and check the Annual Reports of Construction companies, you will see two very common phrases: “tight labour market” and “intense competition for tenders”.
This is a tremendously vicious cycle. For companies that lose tender, there is a lack of jobs for companies, resulting in less money flowing, and the salary is kept low. As for the companies that win tender, they win due to giving the lowest price, hence, the demand for Construction jobs severely outpaces supply for Tenders/Projects. Since the winning company bets low prices to win the job, this results in low prices, low income flowing in and salaries that can’t compare to other industries.
This is the issue that is causing many professionals to leave the industry. This is something that BCA is currently attempting to fix, which hopefully they do. Construction in Singapore only accounts for 2.5% of the country’s GDP and needs to be boosted more.
For every student that enters the course without any interest, it has a damaging effect on the sector in the long run. If one has no interest in the course after going through the post, I highly recommend them to pursue their true interests elsewhere! If you have questions or doubts, try to clear them as much as possible, this will be the next 4 years of your life!
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the interviewees and do not reflect the official policy or position of any institution. They are also not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, class, individual or organisation.
The information contained in this website is intended to provide general guidance only. It should not be relied upon as professional advice and does not 100% guarantee admission into any course.
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