Property Malaysia

Some of you may have seen it advertised by some local developers as “to Conquas 21 Standard!” or something like that.

But what really is Conquas 21 and what has it got to do with Malaysian property?

In a nutshell, it is a quality standard used by the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore (it’s something like our CIDB) to control the standards of buildings by giving a score for every project. The score is in percentage, like say this project has achieved a final Conquas score of 81. How they derive this score is based a systematic, transparent and rigorous testing that involves architectural, structural, mechanical and electrical random testing carried out by different teams throughout the construction period. (The 21 refers to the revision number)

For example, for the architectural component score, they randomly select different locations of the almost complete building and do numerous tests to every imaginable part – like floor levelness, tile pull out test, door alignment, etc. They the Conquas rod and and other normal equipment like spirit level, and all data is keyed in to a computer to be tabulated.

It all started back in the recession of the late 80’s, and the Singapore government took advantage of the slow construction industry to improve the quality of construction work in the country. As a result, after almost 20 years, the Conquas score has become an important factor in determining a particular contractor’s caliber and it stands as a good quality benchmark for other countries to emulate. In Singapore, a lot of precast work and skilled labor is used, which helps in maintaining good quality, something not as widely practiced here.

Scores are published in BCA’s website, so buyers can know what kind of quality to expect, while developers can also know the standard to expect from some contractors.

Malaysian developers can also get BCA to train their staff to this standard and get them to test their own projects, Sunrise and Gamuda are two early adopters of this standard, and many more developers are catching on here. It must also be emphasized that most Malaysian developers opt to test only the architectural component, which is basically the finishing touches, as doing the complete tests can be costly and time consuming. Also, since testing by local projects are voluntary, not all are listed on the website, only those that score well are usually listed.

You can see some of the local projects with the Conquas score here.

It should also be noted that when a local project says that it is ‘to Conquas standard’ it basically mean that it was tested according to the specs, it doesn’t mean that it has any better quality than other projects, unless if they quote score. Even then, it is important to ask if the full Conquas component tests were carried out or not.

For more info, you can check out these websites:
http://www.corenet.gov.sg/iquas/
http://www.bca.gov.sg/