However, under the new Periodic Facade Inspection regime, facade inspections will need to be conducted every seven years for buildings that are more than 13 m tall, once they are over 20 years old said BCA in a press release.
Landed houses and temporary buildings are exempted from these requirements, it added.
The regime, which will take effect from Jan 1, 2022, will help building owners to address and detect facade deterioration in a timely manner.
Responsible parties, such as building owners, town councils and management corporations, have a duty to ensure that building exteriors are properly maintained, said BCA.
Responsible parties must appoint a competent person, such as a professional engineer or registered architect with a Certificate in Facade Inspection, who can be assisted by a facade inspector to conduct the facade inspections. The competent person will need to propose appropriate rectification works if deterioration is detected. For starters, drones would mainly come in handy with tall facades and complex buildings.
If it is a three-, four-storey building, we really don't need a drone because from ground level we'll be able to see the condition. There needs to be practicality in terms of when we deploy drone for such inspections, said Mr Subramaniam.
Arup, which is one of BCA's industry partners, sees the benefit of using drones because it gives us the initial information on the condition of the facade he added.
With the images you get from the drone covering the entire facade side, you are able to identify critical defects at locations. And that will then drive where we actually do our physical inspections to further analyse and identify the potential causes of these defects. Mr Subramaniam also noted that using drones would also help to speed up the facade inspection. For instance, a 30 - to 40-storey building would take about a day to a day and a half in principle notwithstanding weather conditions.
With the new requirements, they stipulate that you need to do 100 per cent visual inspection. To do this, you could either use drones or you could get one of the team members or facade inspectors to actually take a camera and capture the images of the facade from different locations and different angles depending on the height of the building, he said.
The accuracy of captured images will also be enhanced by using a drone, he added.
Lastly, the main reason we're doing this is to identify critical defects. The whole purpose of reducing risk is to mitigate risk. We want to mitigate the risk of any facade failures from occurring. And using drones and capturing the images from drones really helps mitigate those risks.