This Act prescribes standards of safety, accessibility, environmental sustainability and buildability. The legislation provides a blueprint to regulate the design of building works and the periodic structural inspection of existing structures. On 15 April 2008, the Act was enhanced to incorporate the Building Control (Environmental Sustainability) Regulations. This regulation requires developers and owners of new building projects as well as existing building projects involving major retrofitting (with Gross Floor Areas of 2000m2 or more) to meet the compliance standard which was modelled after the basic Green Mark certified standard. Under this requirement, the professionals appointed by the developers or owners would have to ensure that the building design meet at least 28% energy efficiency improvement from 2005 codes along with other salient aspects of environmental sustainability such as water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, environmental management and the use of green building technologies. On 01 December 2012,the Building Control (Environmental Sustainability Measures for Existing Buildings) Regulations was introduced to the Building Control Act (Act), requiring building owners to: - Comply with the minimum environmental sustainability standard (Green Mark Standard) for existing buildings, as and when they retrofit their cooling system (effective from 2 Jan 2014); - Submit periodic energy efficiency audits of building cooling systems; and - Submit information in respect of energy consumption and other related information as required by the Commissioner of Building Control (effective from 1 July 2013).
Under the Mandatory Energy Improvement (MEI) regime in the Building Control (Amendment) Act 2024 gazetted on 11 Oct 2024, building owners of energy-intensive buildings must:
- Engage a qualified professional (“Specified Individual”)* within 90 days to conduct an energy audit of the building and its systems
- Appointed Specified Individual need to develop an Energy Efficiency Improvement Plan (EEIP) with proposed measures to reduce energy consumption. The completed audit report (which includes the EEIP) must be submitted to BCA within 1 year from the issuance of the MEI audit notice.
- Implement measures within 3 years from EEIP submission date to reduce the building’s energy consumption by 10% from the average EUI from the past 3 years before the notice.
- Maintain the improved energy performance over a period of one year from completion submission date and submit a maintenance report within 3 months after the last day of the maintenance period.
