Page 62 - ASPRI2223 eDirectory

DIRECTORY OF SINGAPORE PROCESS & CHEMICALS INDUSTRIES 2022/2023
which were existing courses while others were new, were made available free to members’ employees, through IPI Connect and on the Bolster Safety e-platform.
To help workers keep themselves occupied during the lockdown period, ASPRI-IPI also provided regular newsfeeds, relevant safety videos, technical information and quizzes for them to enjoy refreshers in various skills and knowledge.
Lessons learned
Having weathered the pandemic, the most unsettling crisis in the industry’s history, ASPRI members have learned valuable lessons. Top of the list is the importance of flexibility and nimbleness.
As part of their Business Continuity Management programme, the Cyclect group has diversified its business units’ resources, locations and teams. Although this system increased its operating cost, it served the company well during Covid.
“When one client’s site was locked down, we diverted manpower, equipment and other resources to expedite other sites. If our resources were concentrated on a single client or in a single location, a lock down would have
caused massive impact,” said Mr Melvin Tan, Group Managing Director of Cyclect Group.
“Our operations in eight countries also greatly helped the company in its fight to keep healthy. We could obtain overseas resources and also revenue to support the overall business. For example, when Singapore was in trouble, China was fully operational, they were taking care of the bills. But now it’s the other way around. That’s how we diversify our portfolio,” he added.
The same too for Rotary, which has operations in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Middle East. “We are lucky in a sense that in terms of revenue and orderbook, we are rather diversified. Apart from having projects in Singapore we also have projects overseas,” said Mr Choo.
“The peculiar thing about Covid is that Singapore took a more conservative approach in terms of managing Covid, whereas in other countries it was not so. That’s good and bad. In countries, especially the Middle East, the impact of Covid was not as severe. Construction activities were allowed to proceed. Our workers were also not locked down in the dormitories. We had to comply with safe management measures, which did not significantly affect the construction progress. Of course, there were
additional swap and routine tests that had to be done. In Singapore, we had the Circuit Breaker and the gradual restart of construction activities,” he added.
As we prepare ourselves for the next crisis, what form or shape it will take is anyone’s guess. By leveraging on the recent experience and taking steps to prepare ahead for the next crisis, ASPRI and its member companies will not be caught flat footed but can better respond the next time round.
Driving Digital Adoption in ASPRI
The digitalisation drive has gained traction ever since the pandemic hit. What was once seen as being good to have has become a must have as they enable companies to overcome the acute manpower shortage, rising business costs and multiple issues arising from safe management measures. It was quite apparent during the pandemic that companies which had some digital processes in place fared a lot better than those which did not.
Appreciating the value of digitalisation, ASPRI began its push to encourage members to digitalise in 2018 as digital adoption amongst members was relatively low. Working with the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology and other trade associations such as SGTech, ASPRI began to source for available solutions that members could adopt in their workplace, beginning with back-end functions such as finance, administration and human resource.
The following year, a workgroup was formed within ASPRI. Called the Digitalisation, Innovation & Technology Adoption (DITA) Workgroup headed by Mr Chua, it organised seminars, webinars, workshops and sharing sessions to help members better understand the need to transform and adopt digital-supported work solutions, and create awareness of solutions available in the market for adoption.
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