danny:
"The trouble with the human race is that it doesn't read the Minutes of the Last Meeting". Your Boss was lucky that the Changi S.I.B. were poor readers !
Point taken Danny, though in fairness to my Boss he was faced with a challenging dilemma of how to keep a lot of guys (100 odd?) fully occupied for an indeterminate period. In that regard he was successful and I'm pretty certain he would have gotten the support of the Station Commander beforehand just as he did with the business of the NAAFI trading monopoly previously.
As to the SIB they were preoccupied with establishing that Singapore was not an HM ship and that all duty free cigarettes so marked, though being the only ones available when imported within one's allowance, could be confiscated on arrival and exchanged for Camel cigarettes which NAAFI could not otherwise shift.
Mercifully I avoided most of the shipbuilding experience as I was detached to Far East Comm Squadron and in Sydney at the time of the grounding and remained there to perform the weekly maintenance requirement together with our two ground crew members. Eventually the rectification team arrived and we returned to Changi and I rejoined my Squadron. A fellow co-pilot warned me of the blood, toil, tears, and sweat presently on offer and suggested instead volunteering for a place on a Jet Provost Trials Unit looking for aerial observers, operating from Butterworth but based in Penang. It was a tough choice but one instinctively new where one's duty lay, which was obviously away from the ship yard, so off we went 'oop north!