Everest, a journey not a destination

Recent news of how the Singapore Women’s Everest Team successfully scaled the world’s tallest mountain was a source of inspiration to many Singaporeans. That five ladies hailing from a small tropical island could accomplish such a feat is an example we can all take heart from.

The conquest of Everest embodies the values of passion, tenacity, resilience and enterprise. They have demonstrated that by embracing these values, dreams can become reality.

At Keppel, these are the values that define our Can-do! spirit. Tenacity to overcome the odds is a trait we not only recognise but encourage and in the group, opportunities to exercise this quality abound, at work or play.

The upcoming Keppel Games in August will provide platform for healthy competition, teamwork, camaraderie as well as individual challenges. Already, Keppelites have started training sessions as teams for the coveted title of overall champion for the games.

Come September, the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race will see four Keppel Ambassadors on a sea-faring adventure to discover new horizons and overcome personal limits as they crew the Uniquely Singapore yacht sponsored by Keppel.

For most of us, overcoming obstacles is part and parcel of our work, daily. Each of us may have our own Everest to conquer, be it a major project, a difficult colleague or an unconvinced customer. To surmount these challenges requires patience, resilience and not least, planning and enterprise.

Conquering Everest took the Singapore Women’s Everest Team five years of planning and training.

Keppel too believes in the value of training. There is a slew of diverse and robust HR programmes available to empower Keppelites so that they can move out of their comfort zones and take on new challenges.

The recent Global General Management Programme aimed to educate, empower and energise managers from our offices worldwide with the exchange of ideas and training.

While the Group is committed to investing resources on training and development, as well as providing platforms for growing careers, the onus is on us to make the best use of these opportunities.

This is even more pertinent in the current economic crisis. Such times compel us to ready ourselves with skills, mindset and enterprise to seek and seize new opportunities in an already crowded market place.

Keppelites have, time and time again, demonstrated their wherewithal to withstand any whirlwinds that come their way. It is this Can-Do! spirit that has helped us to become the choice solutions provider of urban living, be it through the mammoth rigs we build, the premier properties we develop or the state-of-the-art power and water plants we construct.

Photographer Stefen Chow, who is currently doing a photo essay on Keppel Shipyard’s Safety Excellence 2010 journey, summitted Everest back in 2005 and is a close friend to the Singapore Women’s Everest Team. He shared, “People often ask me if climbing Mount Everest has changed my life: The act of scaling the mountain didn’t, but the planning and training certainly did.”