Tomorrowland

If smart cities are the future of cities, then Singapore blue-chip Keppel is signing up.

- Jane A. Peterson

Engineering and construction heavyweight Keppel Corp. is celebrating its golden anniversary with the slogan “Fifty years shaping the future,” and it boasts 20,000 employees in 24 countries focused on that task. But it’s a new Keppel unit with just 10 employees that may end up shaping much of that future.

Keppel formed the unit, Keppel Urban Solutions, last November to help pitch its experience as a master developer and to harness its range of skills. Started as a local shipyard, the Singapore conglomerate now positions itself as an international player in building the “smart” cities of the future in Asia and elsewhere. “Urbanization is a mega-trend,” says Chief Executive Loh Chin Hua, breaking into a confident smile at the company’s sky-high headquarters in Keppel Bay Tower overlooking the Singapore Straits. He ticks off Keppel’s strengths in four sectors—energy, property, infrastructure and asset management—all essential to its city-building vision. “The opportunity is vast.”

The unit’s inaugural project is Saigon Sports City, which is designed to accommodate 17,000 residents by 2025. It’s eyeing foreign investors and Vietnam’s growing middle class for apartment sales. Bulldozers are now flattening a 64-hectare site in district 2 of Ho Chi Minh City, and groundbreaking is set for late this year. “We will design, build, stitch it all together—and stay on to own and operate it,” says Loh, a former executive of GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. That marks a shift in strategy for Keppel—formerly it would sell its projects once they were done. Now it will keep them, generating recurring income, a plus for investors.