Surbana Jurong Group - 20 Years of Building Homes for the People

Exactly 20 years ago today, the former Building and Development Division (BDD) of the Housing and Development Board (HDB) was restructured and corporatised. On 1 July 2003, HDBCorp and Surbana Consultants were born.

This restructuring and subsequent corporatisation exercise had its origin in a Paliamentary Budget Speech by then National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan on 20 May 2002 where he first applauded the HDB for having done an amazing job in its 42 years but then said that:

“Today, however, property development is a much more mature industry. And recognising this, HDB has, over the years, been gradually increasing the involvement of the private sector through, eg, its premium apartments. We can further increase private sector involvement to enable us to respond faster and better to changing needs, and the changing preferences. 

As a first step, we are looking into the feasibility of corporatising HDB's Building and Development Division (BDD).”

Minister Mah then went on to extol the benefits of having a “private” building and development entity that could leverage on the 42 years of experience this entity has had being part of the HDB and how as a private entity, this new set up would have the more “autonomy and flexibility”. 

He then stressed that this corporatisation exercise would have minimal impact on the public and promised that the fundamentals of public housing would be preserved. 

However optimistic Minister Mah sounded, most could read between the lines. What had in fact happened was that government spending on public housing was standing at 1.1% of GDP or more than $1.5 billion and this figure needed to be controlled. He said that “In the future, we will have to be more prudent and more efficient in the way we spend the public housing budget.” 

All this happened against a backdrop of unprecedented efficiency by the HDB BDD but also a period of economic downturn in the early 2000s leading to a steep drop in demand for new HDB flats. This is hardly imaginable today, but when the Built-To-Order system was first launched in 2001, the HDB had to postpone one of four launches as there was lower than a 70% take up rate for that site. (BT, 14 Aug 2001)

In August 2001, Minister Mah and the MND confirmed that “fewer than 8,000 new public flats will be built this year - the lowest number in at least seven years.” This was due to lower demand and also lower prices of resale HDB flats which drove buyers to the resale market. (BT, 28 Aug 2001)

By January 2002, the HDB had a surplus of some 17,500 flats on hand and it officially suspended the building of new flats. (BT, ST, 10 Jan 2002)

Opinion pieces started to appear in the newspapers on the continued relevance of the HDB and its role in Singapore’s public housing future. (ST, 19 Jan 2002) There were even radical calls for the government to shut the HDB down completely because of its high costs of operations. (BT, 26 Feb 2002) Around the same time, then Minister of State for National Development Vivian Balakrishnan announced that the government would be launching a review of the HDB and its roles for the future. He said this would take “a year or two”. (BT, 23 Feb 2002)

It did not take much longer before Minister Mah Bow Tan announced in Parliament that the HDB was indeed considering corporatising its Building and Development Division. (BT, 21 May 2002).

At the same time, the HDB was preparing to physically vacate its HQ at HDB Centre in Bukit Merah and move to its new HQ at HDB Hub in Toa Payoh Central. I am quite sure the move to a newer HQ costing some $380 million was a mere coincidence to the conundrum the HDB was finding itself in but unfortunately it was not a good look. 

Shortly after Minister Mah’s announcement in Parliament in May 2002 about being more “prudent and efficient”, the HDB moved to HDB Hub and started operations there from 10 June 2002. (ST, 11 Jun 2002)

In January 2003, HDB announced that it would move ahead with the corporatisation exercise of its BDD and turn it into a company in July 2003. (ST, 15 Jan 2003)

HDB staff from the BDD were however worried that they would not be able to retain their jobs. The picture became much clearer and grimmer in February 2003 when Minister Mah announced that HDB would indeed “shed 2,500 to 3,000 of its 8,000 employees” as the BDD was spun off into a corporate entity. 800 to 1000 of these employees would move over to the new corporate entity and 900 volunteered for early retirement. Staff were also offered a Special Resignation Scheme where a month’s severance pay would be offered for each year of service for those with three or more years of service. (BT, 27 Feb 2003)

On 1 July 2003, under these tumultuous times, HDBCorp was officially born. 

It also began to use the name Surbana Consultants - but only for local projects so as not to arouse unwarranted suspicions of any perceived unfair competition should the HDB name be used in Singapore. (BT, 27 Mar 2003)

If you have ever wondered how the name Surbana came about, the HDBCorp’s Inaugural Annual Report for 2003/2004 has this to say on page 3:

“The first and last letters ’S’ and ‘A’ stand for Singapore and Asia and the word ‘urban’ is in between. The name “Surbana” reflects our strategic intent to “bring about urbanisation through township planning and development, with Singapore and Asia being our two areas of focus.” (HDBCorp Annual Report 2003/2004)

In the beginning, HDBCorp remained a wholly owned subsidiary of the HDB but operated (like other stat boards’ corporatised units) like the private sector. 

In a strange twist of fate, HDBCorp moved its operations back to HDB Centre at Bukit Merah after its staff had moved to HDB Hub in Toa Payoh just a year before while they were still a part of the HDB. (BT, 13 Mar 2003)

It remained there for the next twenty years till earlier this year when the SJ Campus at the Jurong Innovation District was completed and Surbana Jurong Group moved its group companies there. 

Between 2003-2004, several HDB public housing projects that started their lives as HDB in-house projects were completed by the same teams that had moved to HDBCorp and Surbana Consultants. These included the first ever 40-storey HDB blocks in Singapore at Toa Payoh Towers, a handsome precinct in Bedok North named Bedok Vista 8 boasting octagonal precast window frames and Redhill Rise, a massive SERS redevelopment precinct in Bukit Merah. 

In December 2004, in a move that surprised almost everyone, Temasek Holdings said it was buying HDBCorp (and by extension Surbana Consultants) from the HDB. (BT, 1 Dec 2004) The HDB later revealed that the deal was worth some $117 million. (BT, 7 Dec 2004)

In 2005, HDBCorp changed its name to Surbana Corporation. (BT, 1 July 2005)

Between 2005 - 2011, Surbana steadily and surely gained a foothold in its overseas consulting work and also played developer in China, buying and developing land into properties for sale, leveraging on its suite of in-house expertise in this area. It did all this while continuing to design, build and engineer a significant proportion of Singapore’s public housing for the HDB.

In 2011, CapitaLand took a 40% ownership stake in Surbana Corporation and in 2013 absorbed its property business while leaving Surbana International Consultants as its consulting business. Also in 2013, Mr Liew Mun Leong was appointed non executive chairman of Surbana International Consultants.

In 2015, Surbana International Consultants was merged with Jurong International Holdings, a wholly owned entity of JTC to form Surbana Jurong Group. Mr Liew Mun Leong would become chairman of this new entity and its Group CEO would be Mr Wong Heang Fine, who was formerly CapitaLand’s CEO of Residential Properties in Singapore. 

Today, Surbana Jurong is a conglomerate of multiple companies with a staff strength of over 16,000 in more than 120 offices across 40 countries. Under Mr Wong Heang Fine’s leadership, the Group’s revenue also grew from S$ 350 million in 2015 when he took over to S$ 1.8 billion in 2021. 

Surbana Jurong continues to play an oversized role in the design and building of HDB public housing projects in Singapore, most recently completing two iconic redevelopment projects in Queenstown Dawson - SkyResidence and SkyOasis @ Dawson, the site of the HDB’s first planned town where the very first HDB flats were constructed by the HDB in 1960.

Mr Liew Mun Leong and Mr Wong Heang Fine retired from Surbana Jurong in 2020 and 2022 respectively, and now Surbana Jurong is chaired by Mr Chaly Mah. From April 2023, Surbana Jurong has appointed Mr Sean Chiao as its new Group CEO. 

Happy 20th Birthday Surbana Jurong, as you begin your 20th year with new leadership and a brand new campus!