Bangkok--24 Apr--Oasis Media Company Home Builder Association gears up to develop home building market and projects the home building market value to hit Baht 10 billion within two years. In its latest move, the Association strategizes to partner with technical college to create special home building personnel and to review its membership application regulations, while positions itself as a reference source for home building market to serve academic purposes. Mr. Panthep Thanchitikul, President of the Home BuilderAssociation, discloses about the Home Builder Association’s guideline in 2008 today that it will focus on creating standards in home building business to be more widely accepted as well as to expand the home building market so that it hits a home building market value of Baht 10 billion within 2010 from a total market value of Baht 8.5 billion in 2007. Moreover, it will also give higher priority to quality construction, research and development as well as academic achievements that serve as a reference source for home building business since most problems in the industry stem from the shortage of qualified personnel with concrete know-how and underrated professional compensation when compared to other professions, which attracts less qualified personnel into the industry to the extend that it could not be further developed. In this regard, the Association’s policy moving forward will focus on supporting more recruitment of manpower as well as supervisors, which serve as an important vehicle in developing construction quality, as well as upgrading compensation level or enhancing career development to match with other professions. Pertaining to the founding development of quality construction, the Association has specified an operating framework over a period of 5 years. Lately, the Association has joined hands with Don Muang Technical College to open a vocational curriculum in construction techniques, where the Association offers to sponsor all tuitions, with the sole purpose of accerating the production and development of home building personnel sufficient to meet the needs of its member companies. The program, which is free of tuition fees, will receive applications both from the general public as well as from employees of the Association’s member companies to expand their knowledge. “We intend to create more skilled personnel as well as to set up higher quality construction standards through the curriculum that we jointly tailor out with Don Muang Technical College. All students graduated from such program will have a chance to work with our member companies, while we expect that the program will be able to produce approximately 15 — 30 skilled construction personnel a year.” said Mr. Panthep He further adds that while the program will start its first academic year in the coming May this year, it has successfully recruited a full classroom, which consists of interesting applicants both from the general public as well as employees of its member companies. Besides taking academic construction courses, the Association will send in experts as visiting lecturers to add in real life experience to attending students. It is expected that the program will both help alleviate personnel shortage problem as well as lift up the standard of home building companies as a whole. Besides its policy to promote vocational supervisors, the Association will also seek cooperation with state agency or Construction Material Association to determine ways to develop skilled labors, which is still in severe shortage condition, to feed into the home building industry to directly attack construction quality problem. In addition to the development of home building standard, the Association has also revised and strengthened its membership application regulations both for ordinary and associate memberships, whereby member companies who wish to become an ordinary member in accordance with the new regulation must complete at least one year associate membership, must have been in home building business for more than 4 years and must have successful home building record of no less Baht 60 million within 4 years, while the previous regulation does not require prior associate membership and only requires successful home building record of no less than Baht 30 million within 5 years. Pertaining to associate membership (home building), there will addition qualifications, i.e. member companies must have been in home building business for no less than 3 years and must have successful home building record of no less than Baht 30 million within 3 years, while the previous regulation does not indicate the number of years in business and successful record. In connection with its academic works, the Association normally organizes one annual academic seminar, which will also be held in 2008 as usual. Besides this, the Association will develop academic data related to general economic outlook as well as academic researches related to home building industry with the aim of making the Association a data center and home building market based statistic reference. Moving forward, the Association may also cooperate with related agencies to jointly develop such data, while there will be continual developments in all other areas, e.g. providing assistance to home building consumers suffered from unethical home builders, creating awareness in home building industry through the Association’s various activities, especially through Home Builder 2008, which will be held during August 20-24, 2008 at the QSNCC, Bangkok. For more information please contact : Oasis Media Company Limited. Saranyarat Suwannakam 081-423-4121, Piyaporn Chamnien 081-561-1134 Chatchaval Teened 081-626-3095 Email : [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]