Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) signed a MoU to establish a centre for infrastructure and tunnel engineering (CITE) to foster greater collaboration in research & development. The two organisations will also implement joint projects for educational and training programmes in the field of infrastructure and tunnelling engineering.
The CITE will serve as a platform for the civil engineering community to exchange and deepen their knowledge and skill sets in this field. The centre will also conduct and facilitate applied research to augment safety standards in the design, construction, operation and maintenance of tunnels, and other civil engineering infrastructure. This will be beneficial for major underground projects in the next few decades, which include the Cross Island Line, North-South Corridor and Deep Tunnel Sewerage Systems. To augment manpower capabilities, the CITE will develop and offer customised training courses to reskill and upskill local professionals in infrastructure and tunnel engineering.
To uplift industry standards, the centre for infrastructure and tunnel engineering has collaborated with Singapore’s Professional Engineers Board to develop a customised Certification Course in Tunnel Engineering. The course aims to upskill professionals specialising in bored and mined tunnelling projects and supports professional civil engineers in attaining accreditation as specialist professional engineer in tunnel engineering.
Conducted by SIT faculty members as well as LTA’s tunnel engineers and industry experts, the course’s modules are specifically tailored to provide participants with information and case studies in the local context, such as the geology of Singapore and tunnel design, tunnelling construction, and tunnelling operation and impact assessment.
A pilot run of the course in March 2021 attracted 30 industry professionals who will be completing the programme in the first quarter of 2022.
The centre will also serve as a platform to build a pipeline of qualified young professionals looking to join the industry. Through the Integrated Work Study Programme attachment to the centre, civil engineering undergraduates at SIT will have the opportunity to acquire in-depth knowledge and work experience in infrastructure and tunnel engineering. The programme is a distinctive feature of SIT’s degree programmes, where students undertake six to 12 months of paid employment relevant to their programmes during the course of their studies. Postgraduate students can also engage with the industry through collaboration with the centre for their Industrial Master and Doctorate projects.
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