OREANDA-NEWS. During Singapore International Water Week 2016, CH2M launched a new Leadership Development Programme at its Singapore InfraHub—a strategic infrastructure hub positioned to address Asia’s growing infrastructure gap by investing in the firm’s Singapore operations, local delivery and expertise.

The Leadership Development Programme will help prepare the company’s next wave of multi-disciplinary talent to develop and execute complex infrastructure projects in Singapore and the region. This programme, which is supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), is the first-of-its-kind globally for CH2M, where employees will undergo mentoring and overseas training stints in countries in Asia-Pacific including India. During these stints, employees will learn how to structure and execute infrastructure projects in these Asian markets, many of which involve challenging public-private partnerships, due to the gap between the public funds available and the funding requirements to meet the region’s infrastructure needs.

The introduction of this leadership development curriculum marks an expansion in the capabilities of CH2M’s InfraHub launched in Singapore in 2015, aimed at strengthening the company’s engineering and consultancy services such as industrial water, underground spaces, and smart cities solutions. InfraHub was launched in collaboration with utilities, government agencies and city planners to help deliver complex infrastructure projects, advance development of high quality, sustainable infrastructure for Asia’s mega cities through best practices, quality design and capacity building, as well as cultivate tomorrow’s engineering talents to build cities of the future.

In Southeast Asia alone, it is estimated that US$7 trillion will be needed for infrastructure, housing and commercial space from 2015 to 2030, according to McKinsey Global Institute. Apart from fulfilling the region’s existing infrastructure needs, CH2M’s trainees from this Programme will also have the opportunity to work in sophisticated markets such as the U.S. to develop new capabilities in anticipation of future infrastructure needs such as data centre facility development and advanced water quality modeling.