Eden Strategy Institute snags SBR National Business Awards in Consulting

Its Smart Estate Talent Development Programme helped three companies to redesign jobs and skills to support the development of “smart estates” in Singapore.

The Singapore Government’s vision to encourage the rapid implementation of digitalisation in the Built Environment (BE) sectors that comprise security, construction, environmental services, real estate and smart facilities management industries led to the introduction of the Smart Nation Initiative in 2014.

This was followed by the launch of the four Industry Transformation Maps (ITM) in 2018 within the Built Environment. Yet despite these efforts, the country’s Built Environment continued to face international competition, price erosion, and manpower challenges.

Typically, academic faculty at institutes of higher learning drive the development of competency maps based on their research and experience, sometimes in consultation with industry advisory boards. However, Singapore's architecture firms, urban planners, construction companies, and facilities management firms (e.g. security, cleaning, landscaping) had expressed that the skills taught are not always relevant to the actual jobs due to the rapid pace of industry development.

To better envisage the promise of a digitised Built Environment and build a pipeline of future-ready talent to support this vision, Eden Strategy Institute was commissioned to help conceive and develop the Smart Estates Talent Development Programme together with SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG), Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), and the Building Construction Authority (BCA) in 2019.

They established the Smart Estates Talent Development Programme (SETDP), an ecosystem that requires companies to develop new skills that are in line with the emerging capabilities and competencies across the Built Environment value chain.

Eden, which helps leading global corporations, governments, and non-profit organizations to profitably achieve sustained impact by aligning their growth platforms, operations, products, and services with market forces and developmental opportunities, has previously advised the Singapore government on the future of work and jobs, skills development, and manpower forecasting.

In accordance with the government’s view that future jobs, skills and competencies, and talent pipeline will drive the success of Smart Estates, Eden was tasked to study the needs of the sector, scouting for international trends, solutions, and business models, perform scenario planning to model future industry dynamics, articulate emerging new organisational and professional competencies, develop new job designs, and collaborate with institutes of higher learning and lead adoption firms to successfully launch and implement a new talent development framework.

This culminated in a Memorandum of Understanding signed among all the stakeholders: SSG and IMDA with CapitaLand, CPG Corporation, EM Services, SIFMA, SP, SIT, and TP. As a result of everyone’s efforts, the programme is on track to train 300 Singaporeans into new roles to design, build, and maintain Smart Estates. Following this mission, Eden was subsequently also commissioned to support SIFMA and BCA on related work in the Facilities Management space, and are now taking the Smart Estate concept in their work with governments in Indonesia and Thailand.

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning project: