S’pore is 70% to 80% ready: Lim

SINGAPORE — With just more than 50 days before the opening of the 28th SEA Games, hosts Singapore are 70 to 80 per cent ready to stage the region’s biggest multi-sports event, said Singapore SEA Games Organising Committee (SINGSOC) executive committee chairman Lim Teck Yin.

SINGSOC also revealed that it expects to take over the 31 competition venues, located in the Kallang, Marina Bay and the Singapore Expo areas, from the middle of this month, as the organisers gear up for the arrival of more than 7,000 athletes and officials from the 11 South-east Asian countries for the June 5 to 16 Games.

“Until we start to (take over) the venues from the middle of April onwards, you cannot get closer to 95 per cent to 100 per cent (preparedness),” said Lim at the official opening of the SINGSOC Logistics Centre yesterday.

“The different venues will have different timelines because we own some of them, while we rent some of them.”

A number of test events have been held ahead of the Games, including last weekend’s 77th Singapore Open Track and Field Championships at the National Stadium and 5th South-east Asian Pencak Silat Championship at Toa Payoh Sports Hall, as well as this week’s OUE Singapore Open badminton championships at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Added Lim: “These events are throwing up lessons for us ... from the training of volunteers to preparation of equipment to the need to prepare contingencies, whether they are equipment or process contingencies.”

SINGSOC will have help with the mammoth task of organising, coordinating and operating the Games, after it signed on local logistics firm CWT Limited as the logistics service provider for the event.

The partnership also involves the setting up of the SINGSOC Logistics Centre at CWT’s headquarters in Tanjong Penjuru. The facility has been operational since January and will be used as a key warehousing and logistics support venue for the Games.

The value-in-kind sponsorship, which is estimated at between S$100,000 and S$250,000, will see CWT providing monthly warehouse space of 17,000 sq ft and storage space for 11,000 pallets over a 12-month period.

Aside from handling air and sea freight and storage of sports equipment, the equipment factory will also be used to configure and test about 3,000 laptops and devices before they are distributed to the competition venues.

CWT will also provide logistics resources and operations support at all competition and training venues, handle athletes’ sports equipment and luggage on arrival and departure, as well as distribute uniforms to about 17,000 volunteers at the distribution and accreditation centre.

About 400 full-time and part-time staff, partners and contractors will be deployed by CWT for the Games, and CWT Defence Services CEO, BG (NS) Ishak Ismail, said: “For CWT, being a homegrown logistics company, it is a very special moment for us to work in partnership with SINGSOC on a big national event. This being SG50, it is a more unique feeling.”

Working on a multi-sports event such as the SEA Games is not a new experience for Ishak, who was chairman of the opening and closing ceremonies of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games held here in 2010.

He added: “The complexity of operations is the same, as you still have to deal with multiple stakeholders, different types of operations in a tight timelines, delivering what we call a ‘cannot fail’ type of event.”

What the SINGSOC Logistics Centre will handle:

53,000kg of air freight

1,350m3 of sea freight

31,000 packets of snacks

2 million litres of beverages

3,000 laptops and devices

1,642 tonnes of sports equipment, fittings and general supplies