FIRE SAFETY
Ten months after a scaffolding fire killed more than 150 people in a Hong Kong housing estate, Singapore’s regulators have quietly closed the same gap at home. From 2027, the mesh wrapped around every construction site in the country will need to prove it won’t burn.
What MOM and SCDF Actually Changed
On 24 September 2026, the Ministry of Manpower and the Singapore Civil Defence Force released a joint factsheet updating scaffold fire safety requirements — the second tightening of these rules in under three months. The headline change is blunt: external scaffold netting on construction sites will need to meet a recognised fire-retardant standard, and from 2028 that claim will need third-party certification from a Singapore Accreditation Council-approved body, not just a supplier’s word for it. It builds on the July 2026 decision to cut the permissible lifespan of timber scaffolds from nine months to three, which takes effect on 1 January 2027. Read together, the two updates say the same thing twice: scaffold materials that used to be treated as temporary and low-risk are now being regulated like the fire hazard they actually are.
The Fire That Forced the Question
MOM’s factsheet doesn’t name an incident, describing the change instead as the result of “a joint review conducted by MOM and the Singapore Civil Defence Force” prompted by the risk that “scaffold fires can spread rapidly across combustible materials such as timber and scaffold netting, posing risks to workers, residents, emergency responders and members of the public.” But the timing is hard to separate from what happened in Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court estate in late November 2025, where a fire that investigators linked to substandard, non-fire-retardant netting spread across scaffolded towers and killed more than 150 residents — one of the deadliest building fires anywhere in decades. Regulators across the region have been re-examining their own scaffold rules since, and Singapore’s September factsheet reads like the local answer to a question every contractor with an active site has been asking since December.
What “Fire-Retardant” Now Means in Practice
The factsheet doesn’t leave “fire-retardant” as a vague aspiration — it names three acceptable test frameworks: British Standard BS 5867-2:2008 (Type B), Japanese Industrial Standard JIS L 1091:1999, and the US-based NFPA 701:2023. Netting used on projects awarded from 1 March 2027 will need to meet one of these, and from 1 March 2028 that compliance will need to be backed by third-party certification rather than a manufacturer’s datasheet. For site operators, that turns netting from a commodity purchase into a documentation exercise — the kind of thing that shows up on an inspector’s checklist alongside the signage marking hoisting zones, hot works areas, and site fire points.
The Compliance Timeline Singapore Contractors Can’t Ignore
Three dates now matter for anyone running a scaffolded site here. From 1 January 2027, timber scaffolds can stay up for a maximum of three months, down from nine — a change that will push more projects toward steel systems for anything longer than a short-duration job. From 1 March 2027, netting on newly awarded projects has to meet one of the three fire-retardant standards above. And from 1 March 2028, that netting needs independent certification, not just a supplier claim. None of these dates are far off in construction-project terms — a job tendered today could easily still be on site when the first deadline lands, which is why WSH consultants are already flagging this factsheet as a procurement issue, not just a compliance one.
Where Signage Fits Into a Netting Regulation
A fire-retardant net and a fire extinguisher sign nobody can see from the hoarding line solve different halves of the same problem. SCDF’s own guidance ties combustible-material controls to clear, SS 508-compliant marking of fire points, exit routes, and hazard zones around active scaffold work — the assumption being that reducing what can burn only works alongside making sure everyone on site knows where to go and what to avoid if something still does. Sites managing the netting transition are a natural moment to also audit fire safety signage and mandatory signage around scaffold perimeters, hoisting areas, and site boundaries, rather than treating the two as unrelated line items on a safety budget.
Singapore didn’t wait for its own Wang Fuk Court before tightening scaffold fire rules — but it clearly didn’t need much more convincing either. For contractors, the practical response is the same regardless of what prompted it: check your netting supplier’s test certificates now, plan for steel over timber on anything running past three months, and make sure the signage around your scaffold perimeter is as current as the materials wrapped around it. Browse our full range of SS 508-compliant safety signs at safetysigns.sg.
Author: safetysigns.sg Team
Date: 28 September 2026