Urban and infrastructure consultancy Surbana Jurong is building a new campus for its global headquarters in the upcoming Jurong Innovation District. The ground-breaking ceremony for the 68,915 sq m development was held yesterday.

Surbana Jurong Campus, as the building is named, will be completed by 2021 and can accommodate up to 4,000 employees.

It is one of the first tenants in the Jurong Innovation District – which was planned to be home to advanced manufacturing, urban solutions and smart logistics firms – and its location there will facilitate collaborations with research and development and capability developers, start-ups and technology enablers, said Surbana Jurong.

The new campus is located close to Nanyang Technological University (NTU), with which Surbana Jurong set up the SJ-NTU Corporate Lab last year, with the support of the National Research Foundation.

Some of the urban solutions research projects being developed in the laboratory will be trialled in the new campus and then commercialised, noted Surbana Jurong group chief executive officer Wong Heang Fine.

He highlighted that the new building’s design, development, engineering and management services have been and will be undertaken entirely by Surbana Jurong, in “a testament to how far the company has come”.

The campus is designed, for instance, by Safdie Surbana Jurong, a partnership established in 2017 with renowned architect Moshe Safdie.

It follows sustainable design principles as a “super-low-energy building”, featuring green technologies such as solar panels and smart lighting. It also uses productive construction techniques such as digital modelling and precast materials.

The development of the campus is being fully funded by an investment from global financial solutions provider M&G Real Estate.

Under the develop-and-lease model, the campus will be developed by Surbana Jurong’s investment arm Surbana Jurong Capital on a land parcel acquired by M&G Real Estate. Upon completion, the development will be fully leased to Surbana Jurong.

The $400 million investment is part of M&G Real Estate’s Asian property strategy and marks its first business park office investment in Singapore.

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