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.”
The former Supreme
Court building