Top 5 Qualified Persons to Look For When Renovating Your Singapore Landed Home

Most Singapore landed-home owners hire their architect, then their contractor, in that order. They assume the architect is just a designer. They’re not. Under Singapore’s Building Control Act, a Qualified Person — either a Q.A. (architect) or a P.E. (engineer) registered with BCA — is the legally accountable individual for plan submission, building permit, and construction-stage compliance. They sign the calculations. They certify the structure. They are the regulator’s contact, not the contractor’s.

That makes the QP appointment the most consequential decision in your renovation, far more than which contractor you hire. A great QP catches drawing errors before they become S$200K change orders on site. A weak one waves through a structural reduction that costs you a year of insurance disputes after handover.

Here’s what we look for in a QP — the five things, in priority order — followed by the firms we currently work with and recommend to landed-home clients in 2026.

1. BCA Registration & Active Status

Before any other consideration: verify the QP is currently registered and not under any disciplinary order. Both the Professional Engineers Board (for P.E.s) and the Board of Architects (for Q.A.s) maintain public registers showing current status, branch of practice, and any pending or past disciplinary actions.

A surprising number of fee proposals come from individuals whose registration has lapsed or been suspended. Without active registration, no plan they sign will be accepted by BCA — and you’ll find out at submission, four months into the project. Ten minutes of due diligence prevents this entirely.

2. Project Type Match

Singapore QPs specialise. A P.E. who signs off on industrial M&E systems for warehouse fit-outs is not the right person to certify the structural underpinning on your 1970s landed house. Match the QP’s historical project type to your project type.

For landed home A&A, the right profile is typically a Q.A. (architect) with a clear residential portfolio, supported by a structural P.E. who has worked on at least 20 landed renovations. Ask for a project list. Look for variety in plot sizes, era of construction (pre-1990 vs post-1990 buildings have very different structural conventions), and conservation status if your home is gazetted.

3. Submission Speed & Plan-Check Familiarity

Once you’ve confirmed registration and project fit, the next variable is how fast the QP turns around BCA and URA submissions. The 2026 reality: BCA typically takes 14–28 working days for first plan-check, and 60% of submissions get a Plan Reject Letter on the first round — meaning the QP must respond, revise, and resubmit.

A QP who has done 200 landed submissions knows the common reject patterns and pre-empts them in the original drawing. A QP doing their tenth submission learns at your expense. Ask: how many landed-home submissions have you led in the past 24 months, and what was your first-round acceptance rate? The honest answer separates the experienced from the aspirational.

4. Coordination Style with the Main Contractor

The QP’s job doesn’t end at building-plan approval. Under the Building Control Act, the QP is required to supervise construction to ensure compliance with the approved plan. In practice, that means weekly site visits, signing off on critical pours, and resolving the inevitable buildability conflicts between drawing and reality.

From the contractor’s side, we can tell you within two visits which QPs come to site and which don’t. The ones who do prevent problems. The ones who don’t leave the contractor to interpret ambiguous drawings, and the variations pile up. Ask references for: how often did the QP attend site? Were they reachable when site issues came up? Did they hold up the contractor’s schedule with slow approvals on minor variations?

5. Insurance & Fee Transparency

Every registered QP in Singapore is required to carry Professional Indemnity (PI) insurance — minimum SGD 250,000 for architects, though most experienced firms carry SGD 1M–5M. Always ask for the Certificate of Insurance before signing the appointment letter. If they hesitate, walk away.

On fees: insist on a written milestone-based fee schedule. Standard structure for a landed A&A: 20% on appointment, 30% on building-plan submission, 20% on permit issuance, 20% across construction supervision, 10% on TOP/CSC. Watch out for “additional services” clauses that aren’t defined — reputable QPs price all foreseeable scope upfront.

Red flags to walk away from

• ▸Lapsed or suspended registration. Verify on PEB or BoA registers before signing anything.
• ▸Refusing to share the project list. Anyone with real landed experience will share a one-pager of past work.
• ▸Hesitating on PI Certificate of Insurance. Reputable firms have it ready as a PDF. If they don’t, the policy may not exist.
• ▸Quoting a flat fee without a milestone schedule. Either it’s padded or it doesn’t cover construction supervision — both are problems.
• ▸Bundled with a contractor. The QP must be contractually accountable to you, not the builder. This is a regulatory point, not just commercial preference.
• ▸Promises of “guaranteed BCA approval.” No QP can guarantee approval — the regulator decides. Anyone claiming so is selling you something they can’t deliver.