Preparing for HIP: A Pre-Works Checklist for HDB Households

A week of preparation before HIP starts makes a real difference to how much cleanup you're doing afterward. Here's what to get done in advance.

HDB notifies households well ahead of their HIP start date, which gives enough time to prepare properly instead of scrambling the night before.

Start by decluttering. Move or store anything you don't need accessible during the works period, less in the unit means less to protect and less to clean once hacking starts. This is also a natural moment to sort out items you no longer need at all, rather than protecting things you were going to get rid of anyway.

Protect what stays. Seal vulnerable furniture ceiling to floor with plastic sheeting and tape every seam, rather than simply draping sheets over the top. This single step is what separates residents who barely need to clean afterward from those who spend days undoing dust damage, residents who sealed properly and wet-mopped daily throughout the works consistently report dramatically less cleanup than those who only draped furniture loosely.

Consider storage for the rest. Items that are hard to clean once dust works in, upholstery, electronics, instruments, drawer mechanisms, are strong candidates for temporary storage during the hacking phase rather than in-place protection, since fine HIP dust penetrates these in ways a surface wipe-down can't fully address.

Plan for displacement. Confirm the shared toilet and void deck rest area arrangements with your contractor, and think through where household members will spend the dustiest days. This matters especially for elderly residents or anyone with respiratory sensitivity: residents have reported elderly family members needing medical attention for breathlessness after sustained dust exposure during past HIP exercises, so arranging alternative daytime space for vulnerable household members is worth planning ahead of time rather than assuming it will be fine.

Coordinate directly with your contractor about any plastic sealing you've done yourself, specifically which areas they'll need to access during the works. A seal that gets torn open mid-works to reach a pipe or fixture, then never patched, undoes days of preparation in minutes, a documented, common failure point residents report. Knowing in advance which areas the crew needs access to lets you plan your sealing around it rather than discovering the gap after the dust has already spread.

Line up a cleaning plan. Budget time for wet-mopping during the works period itself, not just at the end, and expect a few additional days of thorough cleaning once hacking finishes, even with good protection in place. Standard brooms and stick vacuums struggle with the fine concrete dust HIP generates, a proper wet-mop and a more thorough cleaning pass tend to be necessary regardless of how well you prepared.

A little preparation the week before HIP starts saves real time and stress once the contractors arrive.