The future of home building, Digital IBS

Digital Industrialised Building System (IBS) is the future of home building and a sustainable construction method to attain quality with higher precision and productivity.

Working towards enhancing Group-wide sustainability via digitalisation, in particular to our fourth pillar in Gamuda Green Plan 2025, Executive Director of Gamuda Engineering Lim Hui Yan is upbeat about the potential of Digital IBS in our pursuit of accelerating technology adoption and doing business responsibly. She sees it as a key enabler to elevating industry standards in project delivery with an unparalleled design efficiency, productivity and sustainability.

The synergy between our engineering expertise and property development arm has also put Gamuda in a prime position to spearhead circular construction across the industry. “We can bring skilled talents from both sides of our business together and drive the change strategically as we implement digital construction across our developments,” she explained.

Gamuda Land Project Director of Central Region, Chu Wai Lune added, “A unique differentiator for our township development is when we step up the game with the adoption of Digital IBS. This will accord us the competitive advantages to address the challenges faced by the housing and property market – working towards green building, innovation and technology.”

Pioneering industrial change to Digital IBS

Our people and accumulated experience set Gamuda Digital IBS apart from the industry.

We take pride in our factories that have the largest manufacturing capacity in Malaysia, delivering up to 10,000 residential units per year. We provide a full-suite of Digital IBS services from cloud-based digital design and seamless integration with Building Information Modelling (BIM), to high-level automation and end-to-end precision robotic production. All these bring about value engineering from a digital ecosystem perspective.

Ir. Steven Goh Nai Jun, Manager of Gamuda IBS said, “We have produced a variety of precast products suitable for a wide range of projects – be it landed, high-rise, commercial or even infrastructures. Our precast bathroom pod has so much application potential as it embraces vertical integration of precast shell, tiles, waterproofing and sanitary fitting – all ready for plug and play at the site.”

Gamuda is able to help contractors achieve ‘just-in-time’ (JIT) construction with Digital IBS. JIT is a Japanese management philosophy in meeting consumer demands with minimal delays. This approach helps to minimise flow time and cost overrun in precast handling while achieving zero inventories, which inadvertently leads to better efficiency and savings.

Ir. Steven Goh anticipates higher Digital IBS adoption with closer collaboration between industry players. Precast is precision engineering as it requires meticulous attention to detail in every step to execute it concisely from the beginning till the end.

Gamuda Digital IBS project snapshots

Gamuda Land has been leading the way by adopting Digital IBS in Gamuda Gardens, Gamuda Cove and Twentyfive.7. Digital construction is rapidly gaining momentum in Malaysia as builders see the critical need to embrace technology in the post-pandemic recovery.

The people who made it happened

We celebrate our team who made it happened, one of the many, our Head of Installation Ratchanon Suriyot. Installation is the final key puzzle piece in our Digital IBS ecosystem, without which we would not realise the precast construction’s design intent, functionality and elegant aesthetics.

Ratchanon’s team takes care of the installation details and provides the final touch to our construction quality. Most importantly, he is passionate in grooming local talents to excel in IBS installation.

As Ir. Thoo Hoi Hian, Head of Building Design and Precast, said, “Digital IBS is not the main solution provider for the construction industry, it is the people behind the technology. We need to retain the right talent to unleash the potential of digital construction.”

He is optimistic that Digital IBS can attract brighter minds and younger blood to construction. For many years, we have relied on foreign workers to build in the conventional way. With digital construction, we can declare that our homes are truly ‘Malaysian made’!

Continuously perfecting the details

Ir. Thoo put it aptly, “Change is inevitable, it’s either we innovate or die.”

The team continues to enhance our product design through R&D. A notable example would be adopting the use of cast-in threaded couplers for faster and precise installation.

Our Digital IBS system also adopts ‘tongue and groove’ and stitch joints to provide better protection against potential seepage at the joints. The ‘tongue and groove’ joint forms a three-tier protection system via a passive resistance of kerb upturn, coupled with protection barrier using non-shrink grout and external sealant – a proven system for seamless watertight performance.

Overall, Digital IBS promotes sustainability through a controlled manufacturing environment. Moving forward, more ESG elements will be introduced to build better homes.