KOH BOON HWEE'S mechanical engineering background is a prized asset in his illustrious career spanning diverse industries. “My engineering education honed my analytical power and enables me to see the relevance of engineering excellence to a company's operations,” he said. “It adds value to my management of companies such as Singapore Airlines (SIA), SingTel and Yeo Hiap Seng.”

Boon Hwee was the Chairman of SIA from 2001 to 2005. “SIA seems to be in the consumer business because it deals with passengers but at the heart of it, a good airline has to operate on a solid engineering basis,” he said. “The timeliness of your take-offs and landings or punctuality is important to customers, but it ultimately depends on the reliability of your engines and airframe; in short, your engineering integrity. Some carriers seem tardy in terms of timeliness performance and have more mechanical problems during flights. It can be because many of them outsource their engineering. When you do that, you are no longer in control of the quality of engineering that is being performed. SIA is one of those companies that did not outsource their engineering. It is retained in-house. Therefore, it is possible to exact high performance standards for engineering.”

Elaborating on the importance of engineering excellence, Boon Hwee added, “Once every few years, there is a major check-up of the aircraft. SIA Engineering Company holds the world record for the time taken to complete the check. It is a testimony of the high level of engineering.” Analytical skills are also useful in day to day operations. On SIA flights, classified advertisements are taken out of The Straits Times because it is heavy. Every kilogram in extra weight translates into $42,000 of extra fuel per year. Boon Hwee said, “Few people go through the advertisements. It is not missed. This is the detail of the analysis that goes into the operations.”

His engineering background was also a boon to SingTel which he chaired from 1986 to 2001.