PM Network - August 2016

Talent Spotlight

Sushma Goh, director, projects and contracts management, National Gallery Singapore, Singapore Experience: 28 years Other notable projects:

1. Sydney Central, an office and retail development in Sydney, Australia that involved preservation of three buildings and opened in 1991. Ms. Goh served as senior architect.

2. The Singapore Land Transport Authority’s new Stadium and Bras Basah train stations, which opened in 2010.

She served as deputy director and project lead.

Career lesson learned: “Bring onboard people who share your passion and your vision.”

Change of Plans

The project’s strict conservation requirements meant that some risks were unpredictable. So project managers prepared for the possibility of change—and got comfortable with having to flex the plan. “Everything was planned with the understanding that we could discover something that might alter the plan,” Ms. Goh says.

For instance, the team wasn’t allowed to
conduct any tests that could harm either build-
ing. As a result, the team learned only during
construction that four columns it had planned
to demolish were, in fact, structural and had
to remain. The team also discovered asbestos
beneath the Supreme Court’s flooring, which
forced the team to spend an extra SGD50,000
to remove all materials under the floor, Mr.
Chee says.

All such surprises were documented—and preserved—so future teams can better anticipate unknowns when they tackle historic renovation projects, Ms. Goh says.

“We hope that now we know as much as possible about what’s behind every wall and under every slab,” she says. “Not just for our own knowledge, but also for the posterity of Singapore.”