Maintenance at a shipyard used to be backbreaking work. Mr Chris Ong, CEO of Singapore-based offshore and energy solutions company Seatrium, remembers the long, gruelling days vividly. Engineers had to climb a 700-tonne gantry crane—as tall as a 25-storey building—just to check every bolt and component under the blazing sun.
“Next to our office in Tuas is a tall 700-tonne gantry crane,” he says. “To do regular maintenance, our colleagues had to climb all the way up there and then start going through each component to check for downtime.”
Today, those days feel like a different era. Thanks to Seatrium’s Yard of the Future initiative, supported by Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG), cranes and heavy equipment are now fitted with sensors, and digital twins of its global shipyards allow engineers to simulate operations in real time.
Instead of climbing heights every day, engineers can monitor a single dashboard, spotting problems before they grow. Only when a crane shows unusual vibration or wear do they make the trip up. Innovations like predictive maintenance, machine learning, and augmented reality-assisted inspections have cut on-site manhours by up to 30% and improved efficiency by 20%.
For the engineers, this isn’t just about numbers—it’s about safety, peace of mind, and doing smarter work instead of just harder work.
“With EnterpriseSG by our side, we are building not just rigs and platforms, we are building the future of Singapore’s energy industry,” Mr Ong reflects.
