Korean consortium to build Singapore hospital

A computer-generated image of the Woodlands Health Campus to be built in Woodlands, Singapore. [SSANGYONG E&C]

A consortium led by Ssangyong Engineering & Construction won a $740 million bid to build a 1,800-bed integrated hospital in Singapore, the Korean construction company said Thursday.

While four consortia including Japanese competitors were shortlisted for the project by Singapore’s Ministry of Health, the consortium of Ssangyong E&C, Daewoo Engineering & Construction and Singaporean constructor Koh Brothers Building & Civil Engineering Contractor were ultimately selected to build Woodlands Health Campus.

The Woodlands Health Campus will include an acute care hospital, a community hospital, specialist outpatient clinics and a nursing home in an effort to offer a broad range of medical services on a single site.

Ssangyong said the new hospital will be the first smart hospital in the country, featuring technology that enables management to monitor and link all wards and facilities.

The smart services to be offered include telehealth services, online registration and check-in as well as the use of artificial intelligence to help health care providers sift through large amounts of data and reduce medical errors. The hospital will cover 246,000 square meters (2.64 million square feet) in Woodlands, a planned residential town in the northern part of Singapore.

The consortium plans to break ground on the hospital soon. The construction is expected to take 33 months and the hospital is scheduled to start operations from 2022.

For this bid, the Korean companies were able to avoid a price-war by teaming up in a consortium and beating competitors through healthy competition on construction technology, a spokesperson from the consortium said.

According to Daewoo E&C, Singapore is one of the largest construction markets in Southeast Asia and the company plans to expand its operations there in the future.

BY KIM JEE-HEE [kim.jeehee@joongang.co.kr]