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Extending the Crowne Plaza Changi Airport: a modular hotel construction

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DOI: 10.1080/15313220.2021.2010165

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Extending the Crowne Plaza Changi Airport: a

modular hotel construction case study

Richard Charles Whitfield, Gert Noordzy & Li-Chun Lin

To cite this article: Richard Charles Whitfield, Gert Noordzy & Li-Chun Lin (2021): Extending the
Crowne Plaza Changi Airport: a modular hotel construction case study, Journal of Teaching in
Travel & Tourism, DOI: 10.1080/15313220.2021.2010165

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JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM
https://doi.org/10.1080/15313220.2021.2010165

Extending the Crowne Plaza Changi Airport: a modular hotel

construction case study
a b c
Richard Charles Whitfield , Gert Noordzy and Li-Chun Lin
a
East-West Institute for Advanced Studies, Macau S.A.R, The People's Republic of China; bNorthside
Consulting Company Limited, Macau S.A.R, The People's Republic of China; cDepartment of Hospitality and
Tourism, Feliciano School of Business, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The hospitality and tourism industry is growing worldwide with Received 2 September 2021
more new hotel buildings and extension projects. The process of Accepted 21 October 2021
developing a new hotel seems to be rarely considered in most KEYWORDS
hospitality and tourism curricula. Moreover, hospitality manage­ New hotel development;
ment students are rarely exposed to the important and well- project management; hotel
defined discipline of project management, but clearly, developing management; modular
a new hotel is a reasonably large and complex project. This case construction; hotel opening
study explains why modular construction was the best way to build processes
the extension to the Crowne Plaza Changi Airport in Singapore,
instead of more traditional in-situ construction methods.
Additionally, the case study introduces key principles and practices
within the discipline of project management, especially as they
relate to developing new hotels and/or extending existing hotels.
This case study has been prepared after reviewing published mate­
rials about the project and extensively interviewing four senior
members of the project team.

Introduction
This case study is about the 2014–17 project to extend the Crowne Plaza Changi
Airport (n.d.) in Singapore. Unusually, volumetric modular construction methods
were used for this hotel development project instead of traditional in situ con­
struction. This case study helps the reader understand the process of developing
a hotel extension and the motivations for using modular construction for these
projects, as well as the practical benefits and problems of adopting this novel
construction method. Additionally, the readers should learn more about key prin­
ciples and practices within the discipline of project management (Project
Management Institute, (2017), especially as they relate to developing new hotels
and/or extending existing hotels (Noordzy G & Whitfield, 2014, 2015 and 2021;
Noordzy, 2014).

CONTACT Li-Chun Lin linl@montclair.edu Feliciano School of Business, Montclair State University, Room 530
Montclair State University 1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA
Note: Instructors may obtain a complete copy of the Teaching Note by contacting Li-Chun Lin, Feliciano School of
Business Room 530, Montclair State University, Montclair NJ 07043 or linl@montclair.edu.
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 R. C. WHITFIELD ET AL.

Hotels and other buildings are traditionally made in situ, i.e., workers and equipment
are brought to the site along with all the materials needed and the work team then
constructs the complete property in place. By contrast, in modular construction (Bertram
et al., 2019; Jones & Laquidara-Carr, 2020) a building is made in sections in a factory while
the foundations are prepared at the site where the building is to be located. The building
sections are then transported to the site and assembled onto the foundations using
cranes. The building sections may be a flat wall, floor, and/or ceiling panels that are
assembled like making a house of cards. Alternatively, they may be volumetric boxes that
are arranged and stacked like LEGO® pieces. A building may be composed of a mixture of
panels and volumes as needed.
To begin, and to provide context, the authors describe the hotel and the local market
situation and why modular construction was adopted for the project. Next, the authors
consider how the hotel extension was designed and built, and how it differed from
traditional construction methods. In particular, the authors reviewed the delivery and
stacking of the building modules, which is an aspect of the project that is not needed
when traditional construction is used. Then the authors explain the differences in how the
hotel operating staff were hired and trained, as well as the pre-opening work that they
were involved in compared to more conventional hotel development projects. Finally, the
authors discuss the achievements of this novel hotel extension project, including the
benefits realized and the obstacles encountered during the project.

Crowne Plaza Changi Airport, Singapore

Singapore has been a major international transportation hub for many years and its
shipping and aviation ports are among the busiest in the world. Millions of business
people and tourists visit and transit through Singapore every year. Crowne Plaza Changi
Airport opened in May 2008 to cater to the needs of transit passengers. It was the first
hotel in Singapore to have direct access to Terminal 3 at the airport and has been voted
the world’s best airport hotel for the last 6 years (Skytrax Airport Awards, 2020).
Crowne Plaza Changi Airport is now a 563-room, 5-star upscale hotel that mainly caters
to business people, travelers in transit, and tourists. The hotel is spread over two 10-story
towers. The original hotel was conventionally constructed and opened in 2008 with 320
rooms. The modularly constructed, fully prefabricated 243-room extension opened in
2017. This major extension to the hotel was fully completed in just 17 months, which is
a very short time when compared to conventional construction.
Since the original hotel opened, passenger growth at Changi Airport has averaged
about 4% per year and the hotel occupancy has grown commensurately. In 2014, the
decision was made to extend the original 320-room hotel by adding a further 230+ rooms.
However, there were three major challenges.

● First, the hotel was very profitable. Therefore, a method had to be devised to keep it
operating while the extension was being built.
● Second, the adjacent airport was very busy and was only dormant for a short period
each day in the early morning hours. Outdoor construction work could only be done
during these down-times.
 JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 3

● Third, the site footprint was very small relative to the building size. That meant that
there was no space to stage the materials needed to build the extension using
conventional methods.

Context and motivation for modular construction

Modular construction, where the bulk of the building is made in a factory and then
quickly assembled on-site, was the only viable way to build the extension given the
tight site constraints. Serendipitously, at the time, the Singapore Government was
looking to encourage modular construction to significantly improve the efficiency
of the local industry and to ease growing social and other problems related to
using foreign labor because of the shrinking local construction workforce (Malone,
2017).
In traditional hotel construction, the 3–4 main partners are the developer, architect,
construction company and project manager, and possibly a hotel operating management
company. But within the construction, there are also many other specialist professionals
(structural engineers, MEP, and HVAC specialists, etc.) and other subcontractors (electrical,
plumbing, etc.). Many of these additional specialists and subcontractors are subsumed
within the module manufacturing company if modular construction is adopted. This
greatly simplifies the coordination needed but means that the developer is very reliant
on the capabilities of the module manufacturing partner.
The main contractor appointed for the project had a long history with the hotel
owning company that developed and operated the Crowne Plaza, having worked
together on several other substantial construction projects. Separately, the hotel
company also had a long relationship with an architectural practice that had
extensive experience with modular construction. Given that modular construction
was the only viable approach to quickly and efficiently extend the hotel while
keeping the original property operational and meeting the very difficult site access
constraints imposed by the airport authorities, it was only logical that the three
should work together. Nonetheless, the main contractor had serious concerns
because of the risks of relying on a single module manufacturer (rather than
selecting one of the several reputable and experienced traditional Singaporean
construction companies), as well as using an unfamiliar and unusual construction
method.
In modular construction, the building module manufacturing partner is crucial
and can make or break the project. In this case study, there were no large,
experienced building module manufacturing companies in Singapore, so they had
to look further afield. Given the many businesses and cultural relationships
between Singapore and China, it is natural that they would look for a building
module manufacturing partner there. Moreover, China has been developing exper­
tise and experience in this field for several years. Because of the importance of the
building module manufacturing partner, the developer “interviewed” several possi­
ble partner companies before choosing the one that had the best reputation and
the most relevant experience.
4 R. C. WHITFIELD ET AL.

To minimize these risks, all key project stakeholders visited numerous building module
manufacturing companies and reviewed different module design approaches and mate­
rial combinations. After becoming comfortable with the technologies involved and
wanting to be involved in such a flagship project to spur the growth of a new market
for modular construction in Singapore, the project was initiated.

Hotel design and fabrication monitoring and control

The size of the extension was mostly governed by the design of the existing property and
the space available to extend it. For example, there were building height restrictions
around the airport that limit the number of floors for the extension. The extension also
needed to maintain the same design style as the existing hotel. Thus, the location, size,
and design style of the extension were largely governed by the existing hotel and the
space available.
Choosing to modularly construct the hotel extension meant that the detailed design
had to be completed first before any room construction could commence. By contrast, in
traditional construction, building work often commences in parallel with the detailed
building design work after the conceptual and foundation design has been done. While
more expensive than traditional design approaches, this extra initial work constituted
only a small part of the overall project budget. This meant that building and fit-out costs
could be estimated more accurately and controlled more closely than is usual. In addition,
the actual project schedule could be predicted more accurately.
The Singapore Government prides itself on being forward-looking, innovative, and
efficient, and so was very supportive of the proposal to adopt modular construction for
the extension to the Crowne Plaza Changi Airport. Nonetheless, the government also
needed to be prudent with a project at its prestigious Changi Airport. Subsequently, it
followed a rigorous approval process to ensure that the building would not fail. It required
extensive fire resistance, acoustic soundproofing testing, and materials analysis of the
proposed steel framing materials. It was also concerned that structural faults in a single
module could lead to the collapse of the whole building structure (like a single shipping
container failure causing an entire stack of containers to fall over). Overall, getting
construction approval took around 12 months, compared to the typical 3 months needed
for conventionally built hotels in Singapore.
The initial development contracts between the property owner and hotel operator,
main contractor, architect, and module fabrication company were signed before the fine
details of the module designs were completed. Then a process of design refinement was
carried out where all concerned parties had a say. This finished when representatives
visited the factory in Shanghai to inspect the mock-up room. This is a common process in
the hotel industry because invariably key stakeholders have difficulty in visualizing build­
ing spaces from engineering drawings and renderings. Upon inspection, the developer
and hotel operator listed various concerns, which initiated a cycle of design revisions that
delayed the beginning of full-scale module manufacturing by 6 months. That would have
been a major project disaster when using traditional construction methods, but because
the building design work was moved to the beginning of the project for modular
construction, that setback could be absorbed into the project schedule and did not
delay the overall project completion.
 JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 5

In the end, each room was designed as a single module. High structural rigidity, good
sound deadening, and fire resistance meant using steel module frames with concrete
floors, and acoustic and fire-resistant wall assemblies. In addition, the modules were fully
fitted out, including the bathrooms. Moreover, each module had standardized quick
connections for electricity, water, air conditioning, and waste disposal (Dragages
Singapore, n.d.)To prevent damage during shipping, the wall and floor mounting points
for furniture and other fixtures had to be especially strong with several interior items
needing to be tied in place. Two hundred and forty-three room modules were finally
agreed upon, plus an additional 9 modules for ancillary facilities, such as including fire
escape staircases, etc. Because the extension was fundamentally an annex for the hotel, it
could piggyback off the existing front- and back-of-house facilities and did not require
any additional special-purpose spaces.
A 6-month production schedule for the modules was then agreed upon. The owning
company stationed representatives at the factory to monitor and control scope, schedule,
and quality throughout the production/manufacturing of the modules. After some initial
“teething problems” – see the discussion below – the module manufacturing progressed
smoothly and according to schedule. All modules underwent thorough functional and
build quality inspections and were tested before being released to the staging area for
shipment.
While the module designs were being finalized and the modules were being made, the
general contractor carried out site preparation work and construction of the foundations,
concrete elevator shafts, and the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing trunk lines, etc. This
process took 9 months, which is significantly longer than usual because the working hours
and site accessibility were highly restricted by the airport authority. In addition, there
were significant site constraints due to the proximity of the existing hotel.

Onsite work and pre-opening activities

Upon completion, the first batch of modules was immediately shipped to Singapore to
test that the logistics and storage arrangements were ready. However, the modules were
“lost” and delayed for one week because the ship was rerouted. Therefore, the decision
was made to store the modules in Shanghai and only ship them to Singapore when all
modules were ready, and tight control could be maintained over the ship sailing schedule.
In the end, this approach worked well and enabled the onsite delivery and stacking of the
modules in an incredibly short 26-day period. As the modules arrived in Singapore, they
were briefly placed in a holding yard near the port and then trucked to the site as needed.
On average, 10 modules were delivered and stacked each night and were connected to
the building’s services during the following day. The very short construction time was
even more impressive when one realized that all onsite delivery and stacking work was
conducted daily between 10 pm and 5 am only: due to airport authority restrictions, both
onsite delivery of modules and stacking by cranes were only permitted overnight. The
onsite construction crew was also approximately 45% smaller than would have been
needed if the extension was built conventionally (WOHArchitects, 2017; Unitised Building,
2016).
6 R. C. WHITFIELD ET AL.

After all the modules had been stacked, it took another 3 months to finish the corridors,
facade joints, and rooftop works for the building. This work could not be started until all
the modules had been stacked and the complete building was watertight. One should
note that the room modules were delivered fully fitted out with furniture, fixtures, and
equipment (FF&E). Thus, the traditional onsite delivery of FF&E and fit-out process was
completely outsourced to the factory.
Because the modules were mass-produced in a factory, building materials could be
specially ordered in the most efficient sizes and quantities, thereby generating minimal
manufacturing waste. Similarly, limited building materials were needed on-site, so again
generating minimal construction waste. The project management team believed that
only about 3% of waste materials were generated compared to the 15+% materials waste
typically seen with conventional construction.
Because all the modules were inspected and tested before leaving the factory in
Shanghai, only a minimal final inspection and defect rectification process was needed
upon arrival in Singapore. Typically, in traditional construction, the architect/developer
deploys a team to conduct a final inspection to identify defects. Subsequently, the main
contractor and subcontractors deploy their teams to carry out defect rectifications. Finally,
contractors’ inspectors verify that the work has been properly completed, followed by
final verification and sign-off for completion by the architect’s/developer’s team. In the
situation of the Crowne Plaza extension, a much simpler and more efficient collaborative
inspection/rectification team was deployed, composed of factory personnel, developer
representatives, and hotel engineering & maintenance staff.
The hotel modules were delivered fully fitted out with all furniture, fixtures, and
equipment (FF&E), as well as hotel operating equipment and supplies (HOES), e.g., bed
linen and bathroom amenities. Apart from fixing minor damage caused during the
shipping and removing transportation tie-down straps, etc., the only real work remaining
was to thoroughly clean the rooms and stock them with shampoos and other consum­
ables. That was much less than the work normally done to deep clean and set up hotel
rooms by the hotel pre-opening team.
Because the project was an extension to an existing hotel, and because the room
modules were delivered fully fitted out, the number of typical pre-opening processes,
such as purchasing, recruitment, and training, sales & marketing was greatly reduced.
Furthermore, operations departments (e.g., front office, reservations, etc.) and support
departments (e.g., human resources, training, etc.), and system standards (e.g., brand
identity, standard operating procedures, job descriptions, etc.) were already in place. The
main efforts revolved around recruiting incremental housekeeping attendants, security,
and maintenance staff, as well as pre-selling, which could be done with little risk of the
opening date slipping.

Conclusions
Clearly, in this case, study modular construction was the only viable alternative. However,
(initially) the developer, construction manager, government, and other stakeholders were
very concerned about getting the project right with this novel construction approach.
One of the salient key issues was choosing the right module manufacturing partner;
failure to do so would lead to total project failure. In addition, more up-front design and
 JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 7

testing efforts were required and executed to ensure that the finished building would be
a success. Naturally, government building authorities are very conservative and need to
be convinced to permit novel construction approaches. These efforts paid off and resulted
in a very high-quality hotel extension in a relatively short time. Moreover, the “look and
feel” of the finished “product” was indistinguishable from a conventionally constructed
building.
The main hotel was able to continue “business as usual” throughout the entire devel­
opment project. Upon completion of the hotel extension, it opened for paying guests
quicker than would be possible with conventional construction, resulting in faster busi­
ness ramp-up, shorter return-on-investment period, and thereby reduced the opportunity
costs.
Once the design had been finalized, module production, shipping, assembly, and finish­
ing proceeded very smoothly with few of the problems and rescheduling panics that are
commonly seen in traditional construction projects. Also, because the modules were fully
fitted out and inspected before they left the factory, the typical new hotel pre-opening
effort was significantly truncated. That was partly because the project was an extension to
an existing property, but also because much of this effort was moved to much earlier in the
design phase of the project and to inspection activities during module manufacturing.
The project team firmly believes that modular construction has a very promising future
for hotel development. It can save a lot of project time and eliminate a lot of project
heartache by greatly reducing the number of parties involved when compared with
conventional construction (Pedraza, 2017). Moreover, while there are significant extra
costs involved in transporting modules from factory to site, these costs are more than
offset by the gains in efficiency and speed, substantial savings from waste reduction, as
well as reduced project risk and improved predictability on project completion.
As noted by a senior construction manager, repetitively making building modules for
many buildings in a factory allows one to invest in machinery, worker training, and
development and create a “virtuous cycle” of continuous improvement. By contrast, in
conventional construction, every building site is effectively a new in-situ factory for
making one building with relatively little equipment and a newly hired workforce of
unknown capabilities. Logically, modular construction seems the better approach, espe­
cially if an organization plans to build several hotels over a period of time.

Case discussion questions

The discussion questions focus on the two stages within the New Hotel Development
Project Lifecycle, as follows.

● Hotel Conceptualization Stage

(1) What was the target profile of guests at the Crowne Plaza Changi Airport and why
would they want to visit the property?
(2) What were some of the key issues that should be considered when deciding what
kind of extension to build and how to build (and subsequently operate) it?
(3) What did the developer specifically consider when making the decision to adopt
traditional or modular construction methods for the project and choosing project
partners?
8 R. C. WHITFIELD ET AL.

● Hotel Delivery Stage

(1) How did the developer manage the construction of the hotel extension to ensure
that what was designed was delivered and fit for purpose?
(2) What pre-opening activities were needed to make the hotel extension ready to
accept guests?

Nomenclature

FF&E Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment

HOES Hotel Operating Equipment & Supplies
HVAC Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning
MEP Mechanical and Electrical Plant
OS&E Operating Supplies and Equipment

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Richard Charles Whitfield http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6737-095X
Gert Noordzy http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8321-7349
Li-Chun Lin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4712-3716

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 JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 9

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