Surbana Jurong pushing boundaries to attract talent, promote sustainability

FOR the almost 20,000 residents of the Lahaul and Spiti Valleys in India, being cut off from the rest of the country for half of each year due to snowfall, avalanches and landslides was the norm. Indeed, the need for a road through the Rohtang Pass, which is located at an altitude of over 13,000 feet in the Pir Panjal Range of the Himalayas, was discussed as early as 1860. The sheer challenge of building it however, meant that it took almost 160 years for this to come to pass. First conceived by the Indira Gandhi government in 1983, construction started in late 2009 and was completed after 10 years.

The Atal Tunnel, the world's longest highway tunnel above an altitude of 10,000 ft, now facilitates two-way traffic and is designed to cater to up to 3,000 vehicles per day. It has reduced travel time between Manali and the Lahaul and Spiti Valleys by 46 km and cut travel time by up to four hours. More importantly, it has given the people in the Lahaul and Spiti Valleys safe and year-round access to the outside world by enabling the previously isolated communities to travel and sell agricultural produce in towns, as well as boost tourism by providing all-year access to Leh and Lahaul.

Little is known of the connection between one of the engineering wonders of the world and global urban and infrastructure powerhouse Surbana Jurong but it runs deep in the brief six years since it was formed in 2015.

The next year, SMEC Holdings became one of the first member companies to join Surbana Jurong Group. The global engineering, management and development consultancy was engaged by India's Border Roads Organisation and the Ministry of Defence to provide design, engineering and advisory services on the Atal Tunnel project. The remoteness, accessibility and extreme altitude of the project presented enormous challenges to geological works, tunnelling and mechanical and electrical installations.

Surbana Jurong's group chief executive officer Wong Heang Fine says, "Our tagline is 'Building Cities, Shaping Lives' so everything we do must have an impact. We choose projects that we think will have a substantial impact on the community. It's not just about earning a fee, it's about securing exciting projects and challenging our people to develop innovative solutions," Mr Wong adds.

Facilitating trade in Mexico's interoceanic corridor

BT in your inbox

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign Up

Sign Up

Another technically challenging project the Group took on was the development of the strategic plan for Mexico's interoceanic corridor and master plan for two economic development areas which Surbana Jurong announced in 2019.

The project, which was awarded by Mexico's state government of Veracruz and Oaxaca, was a significant milestone for the group, as it expands its presence in the North American market.

Principally a 40km-wide and 300km-long corridor, it will connect the port of Salinas Cruz on the Pacific coast to the Coatzacoalcos on the Atlantic.

Strategically located with direct maritime links to China's Belt and Road Initiative's Eastern Asian terminal point and Western Europe end, the corridor is expected to broaden market opportunities and drive economic growth for the southern states of Mexico by facilitating international trade and investment.

Pushing sustainable innovation

Sustainability underpins Surbana Jurong's projects. An early champion for climate change, Surbana Jurong has continued to deliver sustainable solutions for the built environment across the entire project life cycle from design to delivery, decommissioning and closure.

Collectively, member companies Atelier Ten, Robert Bird Group and B+H lend their expertise to mitigate the damaging effect of construction on the environment through green steel, super low carbon approaches that track embodied carbon in concrete, nature-based designs and biomimicry.

"Biomimicry is an emerging approach for sustainable solutions. By emulating natural phenomena and patterns, architects, engineers and designers are now incorporating lessons learned over nature's 3.8 billion years of evolution and innovation," says Mr Wong. "Nature has created resilient, efficient, zero-waste and regenerative features that are responsive to the needs of the ecosystem. By offering nature-based solutions, biomimicry will propel the built environment industry forward."

More recently in February, it priced a S$250 million public sustainability-linked bond due in 2031, the first of its kind to feature a premium step-up structure at maturity.

"In the next five years, the common thread among all projects will be sustainability and climate change," says Mr Wong. "A lot of investors are also going to start looking at impact investing conditions. So this is a sector that I think will be quite big going forward."

Snowy 2.0

An area the group has made its mark in is renewable energy. One example of this is the ambitious Snowy 2.0, the next generation of the iconic Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme in Australia.

Designed to provide on-demand energy and large-scale storage for Australians, the project will link two existing dams through 27km of tunnels and build a new underground power station.

Once complete, the scheme will provide 2,000 megawatts of on-demand renewable energy and approximately 350,000 megawatt hours of large-scale storage to the Australian National Electricity Market.

While Surbana Jurong clearly takes great pride in pushing the envelope - be it by experimenting with different techniques or simply by the sheer size - with every project undertaken, there lies a pragmatic rigour underneath their ideal-driven approach.

"First, we have to find work to feed 16,500 people," quips Mr Wong. But he quickly turns earnest: "We get involved in a lot of projects that sometimes don't look that attractive from a revenue perspective, but it satisfies the intangible needs for our people. So we have to balance the two, between earning money and delivering good to the community."

A global footprint to attract young talent

The Surbana Jurong of today is one that those outside of the circuit might hardly recognise. According to Mr Wong, the group is, at any moment, handling about 7,500 projects worldwide from residential projects to entire townships, roads, rail, underground spaces and other critical infrastructure on behalf of governments, public agencies and corporate clients.

It has come a long way in the last six years, following the merger of Surbana International Consultants and Jurong International Holdings. Then the building and development division of the Housing & Development Board (HDB), Surbana Jurong is today a global urban, infrastructure, and managed services consulting firm with a global talent pool of over 16,000.

Indeed, the dream, says Mr Wong, is to clinch a spot within the top 10. Surbana Jurong is currently ranked 26th in the 2020 Engineering News-Record Top 225 International Design Firms. But it is less about hubris than wanting to develop the next generation of built environment leaders that keeps the group on its toes.

Mr Wong believes that planning and executing grand projects is one key way to draw students and excite future architects and engineers. "By being in the top 10, we will get the opportunity to work on projects that I would say are the wonders of the world. And that is really what will help us attract new talent to the group. In the past, engineering and architecture were the most sought-after courses, alongside medicine and law. We need to get back up there," he says.

Notably, Surbana Jurong has been very methodically bulking up their capabilities through a series of acquisitions in quick succession. Engineering consultancy KTP Consultants and China-based design firm Sino-Sun Architects & Engineers joined the same year Surbana Jurong was formed.

A year after its acquisition of SMEC Holdings in 2016, the Group added Australian engineering firm Robert Bird Group, an expert in structural, civil and construction services for iconic complex projects. In 2018, it acquired two major architectural firms, B+H and SAA Architects, a move that was aimed at deepening their urban development capabilities.

To protect buildings and infrastructure against blasts, Surbana Jurong acquired Prostruct Consulting, an infrastructure protection firm specialising in blast consultancy, in 2019. Last year, the acquisition of environmental design consultancy Atelier Ten was aimed at making a real difference in climate change, doing more with less.

"In the past, people may have looked at us acquiring companies and thought we were doing it to bolster our financial numbers. That's not the case. What we've been doing is building our talent base and core capabilities through the different inherent expertise that each company brings to the group," says Mr Wong.

"And that's why we've added all the nine companies that now form Surbana Jurong Group. They weren't on the market. We had to go and convince them to join us. And every one of these entities are driven by this same vision. They have experienced what it means to be doing iconic projects and they therefore subscribe to our vision to create opportunities for young people to work on."

Building for the future

Even as Surbana Jurong is touching lives around the world, it remains focussed on developing innovative solutions for the little red dot. Indeed, part of what makes the Surbana Jurong story so fascinating is the almost invisible hand it has played in Singapore's development from third world to first.

In addition to playing an active role in designing homes for the majority of Singaporeans, the group played a key role in the design and construction of Punggol Waterway, Singapore's first and longest scenic man-made waterway. Reclamation works undertaken by Surbana Jurong over the last four decades have expanded Singapore's land area by 25 per cent.

Protecting coastlines

More recently, it is working with HDB to test the concept of polders as a means of helping Singapore strengthen its coastlines against the threat of rising sea levels.

A polder is a low-lying tract of land (below sea-level) reclaimed from the sea and enclosed by a wall or dyke to protect the land. Water levels in the polder are controlled by a comprehensive water management system, consisting of a network of drains and pumps to keep the land dry.

The polder development at Pulau Tekong is a first-of-its-kind for Singapore. Surbana Jurong partnered Royal Haskoning DHV to provide the overall planning and detailed engineering design for the development.

"In terms of concept, it sounds very simple . . . but it isn't. You have to calculate the strength of the dyke for instance, such as how thick it should be to withstand the water pressure; if it really overflows, what is the volume of water you need to pump out? There are a lot of considerations. The concept is not new, but it requires experimentation," says Mr Wong.

The reclamation project will add new land the size of two Toa Payoh towns for military training purposes. The reclaimed area of the island will also have 21 km of roads and 29 km of drains. It will also have been completed with significantly less sand and other infill materials, reaping savings in the upfront construction costs as compared to traditional land reclamation.

Beyond environmental sustainability, Surbana Jurong has also taken a keen interest in ensuring Singapore's food sustainability.

Food sustainability

In 2018, it worked with client Apollo Aquaculture Group to develop a vertical-farming concept where fish can be farmed in a closed-loop, self-sustaining ecosystem.

Called "Floating Ponds", the concept is implemented in a 1.5-hectare eight-storey vertical fish farm to produce grouper, coral trout and shrimp. This is the first vertical fish farm in the world.

Also worth noting is that it is a zero-waste farming system, which means nutrient-rich waste water from the fish tanks can be treated using a wetland system for natural "cleaning" as bacteria and aquatic plants feed on the organic waste. Treated water is then recirculated back into the system.

Further, in May this year, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Singapore LNG Corporation, the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore, and the National University of Singapore to collaboratively explore the development of a proof-of-value for a green modular data centre system, which would be the first-of-its-kind in Singapore if proven feasible. "These are all new industrial topology we are creating to cope with the new demands of Singapore's industry," says Mr Wong.

That all these projects are focused very squarely on sustainability and climate change is no fluke. Whether it is envisaging floating solar panels in the sea or master planning smart and sustainable townships, Surbana Jurong is firmly committed to continually challenge boundaries around what it means to build cities and shape lives for the next generation.