Top 7 Heritage Building Restoration Firms in SG

1. Goh & Goh Pte Ltd

The default main contractor for gazetted national monuments. Goh & Goh ran the 2019 Raffles Hotel restoration, including the reconstruction of the iconic three-storey verandah and the replacement of original Clay Brooker roof tiles. They maintain an in-house timber workshop that reproduces louvred window joinery and historic roof trusses on CNC machines but finishes them by hand to match 19th-century profiles. Their project history includes the Old Hill Street Police Station and the Cavenagh Bridge approach works. They typically install concealed steel bracing into existing masonry while retaining the original internal staircase flights, and they manage the full URA restoration checklist for any individual monument status.

2. Lum Chang Building Contractors

Lum Chang is the institutional heavy hitter, responsible for the National Museum of Singapore restoration and the adaptive reuse of the former Supreme Court and City Hall into National Gallery Singapore. Their edge is integration: threading modern HVAC, fire suppression, and M&E services inside 19th-century coffered ceilings and 800mm-thick load-bearing walls without visible trace. They rely on a Leica RTC360 laser scanner for point-cloud documentation before any concrete coring work begins. On the National Gallery project, they retained original art deco courtrooms by building independent steel sub-frames inside the rooms, leaving the original plaster walls untouched and vibration-isolated from the new structure.

3. Lian Soon Construction

You see Lian Soon’s hoardings on most conservation terrace and shophouse sites in Katong, Joo Chiat, and Kampong Glam. They specialise in the two-storey and three-storey shophouse typology, handling complete jack roof replacements, rooftop water tank reconstruction, and rear courtyard rebuilding. They handle the entire URA conservation restoration application process, including the submission of measured drawings and the final restoration works report. Their timber contractor reinstates full-height panel doors using Red Meranti frames with fire-rated inserts that pass BCA code while preserving the original door exterior. They are also one of the few firms that consistently replace traditional clay ridge tiles using existing salvaged stock from their own storage yard.

4. Ornamental Plastercraft

A specialist sub-contractor rather than a main contractor, Ornamental Plastercraft handles all decorative plasterwork: cornices, ceiling medallions, column capitals, and architraves. They are called in when original mouldings spall—crack and delaminate—because of corroded steel lath embedded in the original plaster. They run traditional run-in-situ moulding on site; their craftsmen manually draw the horsetail-shaped templates along the ceiling profile. Their catalogue contains mould profiles taken from Singapore’s key colonial properties, including the National Museum, Victoria Concert Hall, and the Istana. Materials are hydraulic lime putty, lime mortar, and casein-based paints, never standard cement plaster, which traps moisture behind historic facades. They also fabricate GRG (glass reinforced gypsum) copies for sections beyond salvage.

5. Preservation Works Specialist Contractor

Preservation Works is engaged when principal contractors discover dry rot, termite damage, or water ingress in original timber roof envelopes and flooring. They perform epoxy consolidation on structurally compromised beams, dovetail splice repairs on tapered rafters, and replace missing sections using Saligna or Balau hardwood matched to the original species via dendrochronological assessment. Their workshop can produce replacement steel casement windows from scratch, rebuilding the original pivot hinges, friction stays, and gripper latches in mild steel painted to the original shade. They also restore historic timber louvre shutters and handle the reinstatement of secondary timber staircases in conserved black-and-white bungalows.

6. Tong Watt Architects Conservation Lead

Tong Watt is not a restoration contractor but the most frequently appointed conservation architect and lead consultant on projects requiring URA conservation approval. They prepare the Architectural Heritage Impact Assessment (AHIA), the measured drawing set, and the restoration methodology report. Unusually, they also operate a separate restoration implementation arm that provides the Nominated Person (NP) on active restoration sites, giving them direct site supervision over the main contractor. Their specialty is adaptive reuse of institutional buildings: converting former school halls, colonial barracks, and post office buildings into event spaces and F&B outlets without altering the original colonnade structures, roof trusses, or existing floor levels. They regularly work with URA’s Conservation & Urban Design Group on submissions for projects within the conserved Central Area.

7. Koh Brothers Building & Civil Engineering

The largest firm on this list, Koh Brothers takes mega-scale heritage infrastructure projects. They were the main contractor for the 2019 Cavenagh Bridge restoration and the Anderson Bridge steel truss reinstatement. Their heritage division maintains an in-house stone-cleaning team using low-pressure water mist application and neoprene poultices, not abrasive sandblasting, which is prohibited by NHB. For the bridges, they installed a cathodic protection system—sacrificial anodes connected to the iron structure—to halt galvanic corrosion in the tidal zone. Their projects require close coordination with PUB and the Maritime and Port Authority for river-adjacent works, and they routinely design temporary coffer dams to expose submerged masonry without harming marine growth that is part of the bridge’s historical condition.