Remarks by Minister Chee Hong Tat at Obayashi Corporation Singapore Office's 60th Anniversary Dinner

Sep 4, 2025

Introduction

A very good evening. I am happy to join all of you today to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Obayashi Singapore.

Singapore has also just marked our 60th birthday. Our shared jubilee is a timely reminder of how Obayashi’s journey has been closely interwoven with Singapore’s own nation-building story. When you invested in Singapore and opened your office in Singapore in 1965, we were a third world country, a developing nation. We were just separated from Malaysia, and you invested in us. You gave us your vote of confidence. Thank you very much for walking this journey together with us over the last 60 years.

Obayashi’s Role in Singapore

Since 1965, 60 years ago, Obayashi has been part of many major milestones in the physical transformation of Singapore – from the first major land reclamation project along Singapore’s eastern coastline, to shaping our skyline with iconic landmarks like DUO along Ophir and Rochor Road. Over the years, Obayashi has also transformed from building landmark projects to pioneering new frontiers in construction technology.

Beyond technical excellence, I am especially heartened by your commitment to uplifting local industry capabilities and grooming the next generation of talent. Let me share three examples of best practices that I hope can also serve as a useful reference for all of us in the built environment industry, and other industries beyond the built environment.

Partnership with Singapore firms

First, underlying Obayashi’s success in several projects, including Funan and Jewel Changi Airport, has been its close partnership with a local company, Woh Hup. Woh Hup is one of Singapore’s established local construction companies.

A fully integrated joint venture between the two organisations has enabled the sharing of best practices and individual growth in areas such as advanced technical expertise, forward planning, contract management and human capital development.

Through its partnership with Woh Hup, Obayashi has been able to combine its global expertise with strong local capabilities, enabling the successful construction of key projects.

We look forward to the successful completion of even more of such joint projects, including the ongoing Singtel Comcentre project for which I recently attended the groundbreaking ceremony in July.      

Technological innovations

Second, Obayashi is a leader in technological advancements for the built environment sector both in Japan and Singapore. As you saw in the video earlier, these are some examples of technologies and capabilities that Obayashi has been developing over the years and deploying in various projects around the world.

In Singapore, at the Obayashi Construction-Tech Lab at BCA’s Braddell Campus, Obayashi has been piloting remote-controlled cranes, robotics and 3D printing, to boost productivity, improve safety, and reduce reliance on manpower.

Obayashi has also pioneered autonomous tower crane technology for HDB’s Construction Transformation Project at Tengah, one of our new housing estates, demonstrating how AI can transform public housing construction. I hope the new technologies and collaboration with Obayashi will enable HDB to lead our vision of building more and building faster.

These innovations are also showcased at the “Obayashi SG60 Vision” exhibition as part of The Built Environment Expo (BEX) Asia.

Obayashi’s success in this area is underpinned by its fundamental belief in “Kaizen”, or continuous improvement. This resonates with the Lean Construction principles that BCA has been emphasising to help our industry maximise value, minimise waste and to work towards the collective transformation of our industry. Let me highlight two important aspects of this work.

The first is not to assume that whatever we have today is good enough. Don’t be complacent. Don’t be satisfied with the status quo, but to see the status quo as a starting point for us to do even better, and for us to continuously look for areas for improvement, and strive towards excellence and a spirit of continuous improvement.

The second, is that very often, when we implement Kaizen projects, you can’t do it alone. You do it in a team, you do it with others. It can be a small team within your organisation or a big team with other organisations. It can even be a big team with other players in the industry. But no matter whether it is a small project or a big project, no matter whether you do it alone or you do it with others – this spirit of wanting to make things better is something that both Singapore and Obayashi share.

I hope Obayashi’s expertise in implementing these advanced approaches, combined with the Japanese cultural emphasis on excellence, will help us overcome and be able to make those gradual but important improvements in the construction sector.

Talent attraction

Third, Obayashi is investing in attracting and grooming local talent in our built environment sector.

Together with its partners and subcontractors, Obayashi has raised more than $1.5 million this year to support scholarships and bursaries for engineering programmes at our local universities (NTU, NUS, SIT and SUTD).

In addition, Obayashi offers mentorship opportunities to grow young talent by pairing them with more experienced staff to deepen their technical skills and to allow younger officers to learn from their mentors’ career journeys, which can help them have a more holistic growth and development. One beneficiary of this mentorship programme is Ms Cherrie Liew. Cherrie started off as a junior engineer supporting the submission of tenders for new projects. With close support and guidance from her mentors, Cherrie has deepened her technical knowledge and project management skills and she has risen to take on a bigger role as a Planning and Engineering Manager, leading a team to plan and execute projects. I wish Cherrie all the best in her career, and I hope there will be many more young talents in our built environment sector who can also benefit from such programmes that Obayashi and many of you have put in place to support our talent pipeline.

Conclusion

Looking ahead, Singapore plans to build more complex and integrated developments that would require advanced building expertise and innovative solutions. PM, when he was Minister for National Development, said “We are not done building Singapore.”. That is still what my colleagues and I believe. We will have new projects that we are working on, and we will have older estates and older buildings that we will need to be rejuvenated and redeveloped. So, we definitely are not done building Singapore.

One example is the Changi Airport Terminal 5. It is a very big project that will take us 10 years, and I used to work on this when I was in the Ministry of Transport. Obayashi is involved in the substructure infrastructure works for the main terminal and also for the very important ground transportation hub.  

With annual construction demand projected at $39 to $46 billion from 2026 to 2029, we will need experienced and innovative partners such as Obayashi to deliver such projects in the most efficient and sustainable way.

I would like to end my speech by extending my heartiest congratulations to Obayashi on the 60 years since you established your Singapore office. With your strong engineering capability and innovative spirit, guided by Mr Lee Aik Seng’s strong leadership, Obayashi will continue to be a valued partner in making our construction industry more productive, more sustainable, and more resilient.

I wish everyone a pleasant evening. Thank you.