Looking Back

At 2020

In a year that will be remembered for Covid-19, teams across the Surbana Jurong Group have been working continuously to deliver crucial projects, fulfilling our purpose of “Building cities, shaping lives”. We’re also helping clients with their planning, design and engineering for a post-Covid world.

The big drivers of change are still there – population growth, urbanisation, climate change. The pandemic has made people ask different questions – hard questions – and Surbana Jurong Group has responded to these questions. Here is a review of the year that was 2020.

Key Media Coverage

SINGAPORE EXPO COMMUNITY CARE FACILITY

A cross-disciplinary team worked on the design, material procurement, infrastructure provision and construction supervision to convert two halls into a 960-bed community care facility in three days. Read the article uploaded by TODAY here.

GCEO Wong Heang Fine: Fire in the Belly

GCEO Wong Heang Fine talks to The Edge Singapore about his vision of Surbana Jurong as a multidisciplinary consultancy. He shared that there is no shortcut to success for the company – our rise was made possible on the back of the experience and the technical chops of its people, honed over the years.

Environmental design consultancy Atelier Ten joins the Surbana Jurong Group

We welcomed Atelier Ten, a global award-winning environmental design consultancy specialising in sustainable and innovative design solutions, to our Group of companies as we anchor our solutions in sustainability. The story was covered extensively by media channels such as Channel NewsAsia, The Business Times, The Straits Times and Environment Analyst.

SJ Architects help to boost food security and resiliency

SJ Architecture has been working with a Singapore fish farm, the Apollo Aquaculture Group, on an eight-storey vertical farm. This supports Singapore’s plan to produce 30 per cent of its nutritional needs locally by 2030, a timely effort as food resiliency came into focus during the pandemic. Read about it here.

Group CEO Wong Heang Fine on Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia

GCEO Wong Heang Fine shared that central to the group’s acquisition strategy is our talent helping SJ deliver better, more sustainable solutions. Watch the interview here.

Mitbana advances smart transit-oriented developments in BSD City, Indonesia

The partnership between Sinar Mas Land and Mitbana seeks to develop first-of-its-kind integrated TODs in Indonesia with new approaches to urban development in a better connected world post-pandemic. This exciting push was carried widely in regional press such as Kompas, The Jakarta Post, Nikkei Review and Singapore business press.

AETOS HIGHLIGHTS

New training programme to upgrade skills for over 1,000 Aetos security officers

AETOS signed an MOU with the Union of Security Employees to form a company training committee that will provide advanced training packages to teach security officers new skill sets such as increased digital savviness, emergency response and first aid to customer service and facilities management. The news was covered in The Straits Times, The New Paper, Labour Beat and other media.

Sustainable PT kit with Man’s Best Friend

AETOS worked together with Man’s Best Friend, a Singapore sustainable apparel start-up, to co-create and design a high-performance and eco-friendly Physical Training Kit for trainees. Read more about the launch here.

Female Hospital Security Guard wins Security Officer of the Year Award

AETOS’ Security Supervisor Thurkadevi A/P Nanda Gopal won the “Security Officer Of The Year award”. Read more here.

B+H HIGHLIGHTS

Cascade of sky gardens to crown Shenzhen Children’s Hospital and Science and Education Building by B+H Architects 

The project was featured in the world’s leading design publications, along with an Instagram post on the project which was shared with an audience of 2.7 million followers. Stephanie Costelloe, B+H Architect’s principal and director of healthcare in Asia shared her vision for the building. Read more here.

How will we approach the health of our communities and our planet after COVID-19?

Thought leadership by Ms Lisa Bate, Global Sustainability Lead, Principal, who posits the sunsetting of the term ‘social distancing’ by designers and architects in favour of ‘physical distancing’ – designing to protect social interaction. She also contemplates the use of indoor air quality (IAQ) monitoring tools to track data and improve the wellbeing of humans and our planet. Read more here.

Don’t Knock on Wood

Led by B+H’s Seattle Studio, the design concept for the West Seattle Bridge continues to generate momentum. The concept has evolved into a bold new vision for the future of sustainable infrastructure development. Read more here. 

RBG HIGHLIGHTS

Signature Structure Highlights Regeneration

Spanning an important London underground station and featuring an architecturally-detailed exposed steel frame, 21 Moorfields is a feat of engineering. The combined solution of low-level temporary / permanent launching trusses, mega arches, and a construction methodology developed largely by RBG, offered an efficient solution to this heavily constrained site. Read more here.

Offsite’s Tolerance Challenge

Mark Boyle and Giorgio Bianchi, both directors at RBG, and Katerina Vatti, associate at RBG, explained that adopters of DfMA should understand that a different tolerance strategy is required from traditional construction. Read more here.

3D Printing in Construction: Where is the value?

In the past few years additive manufacturing, or 3D printing as it is commonly known, has risen in the construction industry’s consciousness. Evoking images of fluid, organic, sometimes other-worldly, sustainable structures, 3D printing challenges us to envision new paradigms for both architecture and building. RBG’s Group Engineering and Technology Director,  Mr Paul Mullet, explained that we should welcome 3D printing with open arms as an in-progress case study on innovation. Read more here.

SMEC HIGHLIGHTS

Mott MacDonald, SMEC and KBR design joint venture wins top global award for Sydney Metro Northwest project

The Mott MacDonald, SMEC and KBR design joint venture (JV) team’s contribution to the AU$7.3 billion Sydney Metro Northwest project has earned the 2020 ENR Global Best Rail Project award. 

The project, delivered by the New South Wales state government, is the Sydney Metro, Australia’s biggest public transport project. Read more here.

Encouraging females in engineering – sharing experiences

Based on their experiences and data gathered from SMEC-led programmes over the years, Amy Smith, a graduate engineer in SMEC’s water  

infrastructure team, and Karina Thiele, an experienced engineer at SMEC, helped to deliver a research paper titled: Diversity in  

the Workplace – Promoting Female Participation and Retention in the Engineering Field. 

PM says Australia’s construction industry will help keep the economy running

Unlike many countries, Australia is keeping its construction industry going, framing it as a national economic priority. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison signalled that construction and other building works should continue. James Phillis, CEO of SMEC Australia, shared about the positivity of the Australian government in terms of keeping businesses and operations running while encouraging social distancing measures. Read more here.