Singapore Sports Hub

A bright future for the youth and sport community in Singapore: Congratulations to the Singapore Sports Hub Consortium.

As the late, great Bill Shankly – legendary manager of Liverpool Football Club during the 1960s – once said: “If you’re first, you’re first. If you’re second, you’re nothing.” Huddled together in Singapore’s Mandarin Hotel on the sunny Saturday morning of January 19th, the Singapore Sports Hub Consortium would certainly have echoed this sentiment, and when they were announced as the preferred bidder for Singapore’s largest PPP project in history, nothing was sweeter than first place.

The SSHC edged out competition from the Singapore Gold and Alpine consortia to take the job of building and running the Singapore Sports Hub for the next 25 years. Bearing the S$1.2bn capital expenditure, the consortium will receive a total of S$1.87bn from the Singapore government to create an integrated sports complex like no other in the world.

m62’s Client Liaison Manager in Singapore, John Bevan, sat patiently refreshing online news pages from ten o’ clock that morning for news of the announcement. m62 had engaged with the consortium only two weeks before the first pitch presentation to the Sports Council in March, working onsite with all the consortium members to pull together the many strands of their offering into a two and a half hour presentation that would blow the panel away. “I think Nick and I got an average of three hours sleep per night over the two weeks!” John recalls, “It was also tough on our studio, as we were refining the slides and multimedia right up until the last few days, but as always it was a great team effort and we are all very proud of the result.”

The consortium, led by construction giants Dragages Singapore, includes DP Architects and Arup Sport on the design front, facilities managers United Premas, HSBC Infrastructure, and Active Rights Management, Global Spectrum and WorldSportGroup Pte Ltd. who share the responsibility for making sure the SportsHub is a dynamo of sporting activity for the Singapore community all year round.

In his announcement speech, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports for Singapore, stated that the Council’s requirement for a programme management strategy that would ensure a high level of participation for the local community was given the most weight in the evaluation process. “In the area of programming and events, SSHC provided a holistic strategy to promote sports participation, leisure, entertainment and lifestyle activities via a focus on community and grassroots sports. This well-conceived an integrated approach will create foot traffic and promote vibrancy at the Sports Hub.”

m62’s contribution to the project was to produce a series of presentations and multimedia that not only demonstrated innovation and excellence in the design, facilities management and financial sustainability of the SSHC’s offering, but also directly addressed the Minister’s wider goals for the community. The section of the presentation delivered by Seamus O’ Brien, CEO & President of WorldSportGroup, explained how their unique programme management strategy would inspire the youth of Singapore to get involved and help develop sporting excellence for the nation at the grass-roots level. ‘Making Singapore Proud’ was the theme for an emotionally-charged piece of multimedia that promised real value for the local community, rather than oneoff showpiece events, to make a huge impact on the national sporting culture. O’ Brien explained “’there’s no point in relying only on bringing big names here because these guys will come and go. The important thing is embedding local events in the community for years to come.”

Ensuring that these issues were identified, and that the presentation was properly weighted to address them, required critical thinking from the very start.

Our CEO Nicholas B. Oulton worked tirelessly with all of the consortium heads to not only formulate a winning value proposition, but also to build consensus around that value proposition. This was essential to ensure that every thread of the overall argument was consistent, and tied into all of the other supporting material and documentation submitted. m62’s visualisation of the SSHC’s approach certainly proved to engage Dr. Balakrishnan during the second round; he took two and a half hours out of his packed schedule to ask further questions after the team had delivered their presentation.

The presentations themselves utilised insight into the government’s current strategic initiatives, a blend of logical and emotional arguments, and m62’s unique presentation style to clearly and memorably communicate the value. The result is a triumph for effective presenting and a massive win, not only for the SSHC but also for Singapore’s youth and sport community.