Annual Report 2019-2020

The Singapore Branch had planned to continue its outreach mission this year with Networking Events, Technical Evenings, a Singapore-based Subsea Awareness Workshop with the IEEE and its support of Oceans 2020, but like all of us we had to curtail these activities due to the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the downturn

in our relevant industries.

The SUT team here in Singapore is relatively small and made up of 100% volunteers, our team has been impacted by members having to deal with redundancy, while the rest of us have had to adapt to new methods of working and greatly increase workloads. This coupled with the Singapore Government imposing strict measures to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the community. At the end of March 2020 all public gatherings were banned, with hotels, meeting spaces and bars being forced to close their doors. This has not only stopped our Technical and Networking events but also our support of external conferences in exhibitions

We held a Technical Evening on the 26th September with speakers from the National University of Singapore and IMarEST. Prof Wai Lam LOH (NUS) gave an excellent presentation on Naturally Induced Slug Loading in Offshore Pipelines and Andrew Wong discussed the IMarEST and their ongoing activities Asia and future collaboration with the SUT in Singapore. We were unable to secure sponsorship due to one of the partners pulling out at the last minute, so we self-sponsored this event to allow the meeting to continue and promote the SUT in Singapore.

On November 21st we held our End of Year Social Night that was kindly sponsored by Atlas Professionals and Norbit. This was primarily a networking event but also designed to promote awareness of the SUT in Singapore. We did not have any technical presentations, but the chairman gave a small talk on funding and planned events for 2020. The night was hugely successful, and this combined with the tireless follow up work of the committee we managed to secure S$8,000 towards the 2020 budget. Despite the lack of events this year all our sponsors have allowed to keep the money they have pledged for future activities.

As stated at the top of the report we are a small committee with limited resources, to this end we reached out to the UK head office requesting additional financial support, but in SUT’s present financial situation it was not possible for SUT to allocate the funding that we had requested. This lack of financial support from SUT head office was going to affect the Singapore branches level of activity and this combined with the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will seriously influence the future of the Society in Singapore. We plan to hold a resumption of business meeting in November and at this time we will look into the resources available and ability for the team in Singapore in committing the required time and energy to the year ahead.

To read the SUT Singapore Annual Report for Jan-December 2020 click here.