NCS launches Singapore AI Mission Centre & expands team

NCS has launched an AI Mission Centre in Singapore and plans to expand its team of Intelligentisation Forward-Deployed Engineers to more than 300.

The move is part of a wider push by the technology services group to increase AI deployment work with public and private sector organisations.

The new centre is intended to help organisations move from trial projects to broader operational use of AI. NCS currently has 100 Intelligentisation Forward-Deployed Engineers, or iFDEs, and plans to grow that number through internal reskilling and external recruitment over the next two years.

The engineers are embedded within client teams across sectors including transport, healthcare and manufacturing. NCS described them as vendor-agnostic specialists with domain expertise focused on deploying AI in live operating environments.

Alongside the launch, NCS signed three memorandums of understanding with Changi Airport Group, the Institute of Mental Health and Life3 Biotech. The agreements focus on transport, healthcare and advanced manufacturing projects.

One agreement with Changi Airport Group covers further work on iFerret, an intelligent runway surveillance system designed to monitor foreign object debris. The project uses a co-development model in which operational requirements are tested in airport environments before wider deployment.

In healthcare, NCS is working with the Institute of Mental Health on digital tools intended to support patient care and healthcare workers. One of the first projects under that arrangement is Bio-ID, a facial recognition system aimed at improving patient identification and helping staff identify safety considerations in inpatient care settings.

The Institute of Mental Health is expected to validate the system in its wards and provide feedback for refinement before any broader use in other care settings.

The third agreement, with Life3 Biotech, focuses on biomanufacturing. The two companies plan to develop AI-based optimisation tools that combine AI with bioprocessing technologies to improve production efficiency, scalability and sustainability in the cultivation of micro-organisms.

Workforce plans

NCS linked the Mission Centre launch to a broader talent development effort. It is providing AI fluency training across its workforce, including courses on prompt engineering, responsible AI and working with AI agents.

More than 2,000 AI practitioners within the business are being trained in advanced skills for building and deploying production-ready agentic systems. NCS is also redesigning software engineering roles to combine business analysis, software development and testing in AI-enabled teams.

The group is also building earlier-career pipelines through work-study programmes for university, polytechnic and ITE graduates. These are intended to give participants practical exposure to AI from the start of their employment.

NCS operates across Asia Pacific with a workforce of 15,000 and is part of Singtel Group. The Mission Centre brings together industry specialists, engineering teams and internal AI platform teams in one hub.

The centre will use products from the Sunshine.AI portfolio in client projects. These include Sunshine.core, which provides a foundation for building and governing enterprise AI agents, and Sunshine.commanderAI, a system designed to allow robots from different manufacturers to work together on operational tasks.

NCS also said teams it calls AI Natives, referred to internally as "speedboats", will support client projects alongside the forward-deployed engineers. Those teams are intended to test and trial new approaches quickly during implementation work.

The launch was officiated by Josephine Teo, Singapore's Minister for Digital Development and Information. NCS Chief Executive Officer Sam Liew said the investment was intended to strengthen deployment capacity rather than limit AI work to experimentation.

"We want Singapore to be a place where the world comes to see AI working at scale - strengthening industries, improving public services, and opening new possibilities for our people. The NCS AI Mission Centre is our commitment to that ambition. By growing our current team of 100 iFDEs to more than 300, we are investing in our greatest asset - our people - who can turn technological breakthroughs into everyday progress. Our goal is to build AI capabilities that serve Singapore, and solutions that can make an impact around the world," said Liew.