South Korea’s Ssangyong Engineering & Construction has secured a $2.15 billion contract to design and build Tengah General and Community Hospital, a 1,534-bed acute and community care campus being developed in western Singapore. Commissioned by Singapore’s Ministry of Health, the contract is Ssangyong’s largest hospital project in Singapore so far, with the company describing it as the first time the government has awarded a single foreign contractor responsibility for a hospital’s full delivery process from design through construction.
Tengah General and Community Hospital will comprise three basement levels and nine floors above ground, with the project, including design work, scheduled to take 63 months. Ssangyong Engineering & Construction is delivering the hospital for Singapore’s Ministry of Health, which plans to add around 4,000 public hospital beds by 2030 to accommodate demand across the country’s rapidly developing western region. Once completed, the facility will be operated by the National University Health System (NUHS), one of Singapore’s three public healthcare clusters responsible for acute and community hospitals.
Ssangyong’s Singapore Hospital Pipeline Keeps Growing
Ssangyong entered Singapore’s hospital construction sector in 1998 and 1999, completing Tan Tock Seng Hospital and New KK Hospital, and has continued securing hospital work in the country over the years.
Its latest sequence began with Woodlands Health Campus, a $740 million project awarded in 2018 through a joint venture involving Daewoo Engineering & Construction and Koh Brothers. The campus opened in 2024 and can accommodate up to 1,800 beds across eight buildings.
In December 2025, Ssangyong secured a $580 million contract for Alexandra Hospital’s outpatient ward, again as part of a joint venture, this time alongside Japan’s Shimizu Corporation and Singapore’s Kimly. Ssangyong held a 40 percent share valued at approximately $232 million. At $2.15 billion, the Tengah contract is substantially larger than both earlier projects. Instead of focusing on the difference in contract values, Ssangyong’s announcement highlighted the scope of the award, calling it the first Singapore hospital project to place design and construction under a single award to a foreign contractor.
The contract also comes as Ssangyong continues a broader recovery. Following Global Sae-A Group’s acquisition of a majority stake in December 2022, the company’s overseas orders increased more than eightfold, rising from $121 million in 2022 to $650 million in 2025, while its order backlog has approached $6.7 billion. Singapore is one of three key overseas markets identified by the company, alongside Dubai and Equatorial Guinea, and the Tengah contract alone would surpass Ssangyong’s entire overseas order total for 2025.
Tengah Hospital Set to Ease a Western Bed Crunch
Health Minister Ong Ye Kung told Parliament in March 2024 that Singapore had recently completed a new hospital in the north, was constructing another in the east, and was expanding Singapore General Hospital in the central region. The western part of the country, he said, would be next, adding capacity alongside Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and Jurong Community Hospital.
National University Health System has subsequently established a hospital planning team for the Tengah site. The team is co-chaired by a National University Hospital physician and a deputy chief executive of MOH Holdings, the statutory board responsible for overseeing Singapore’s public healthcare institutions. NUHS expects Tengah General and Community Hospital to begin operations in the early 2030s, in line with the government’s original project schedule.
Tengah remains an area undergoing significant development. Marketed as Singapore’s first “Forest Town,” the estate is being developed around new public housing, and the hospital will become one of its largest individual infrastructure components once completed. Furthermore, the location reflects a wider trend in Singapore’s hospital development programme, where new acute and community healthcare capacity generally follows major residential expansion.
Design Work Was Already Under Way Before Ssangyong’s Win
Singapore’s Ministry of Health appointed DP Architects, the local practice responsible for Sengkang General and Community Hospitals, to provide architectural, structural, mechanical and electrical engineering consultancy, as well as medical planning services, for Tengah General and Community Hospital. The appointment was made in August 2025, more than a year before Ssangyong secured the construction contract.
A separate design-build-operate-maintain tender for the hospital’s district cooling system was still being progressed this year, with bids due in mid-2026. This indicates that the project is being developed through multiple connected packages rather than one comprehensive all-in contract, although Ssangyong’s $2.15 billion award accounts for the majority of the physical construction work.
Track records such as these can increasingly influence which companies secure subsequent packages on long-term megaprojects, and the pattern extends beyond Singapore’s hospital programme. In Sharjah, developer Arada recorded 100 million safe working hours without a lost-time injury this year across its Aljada megacommunity, a milestone it has highlighted as the development’s overall value has reached AED35 billion ($9.5 billion) since its 2017 launch. Arada has continued awarding additional packages, including the new 631-unit Jenna residential tower and a citywide parking concession awarded this year to Dubai operator Parkin. In both instances, a delivery record established across successive phases supports the continuation of work into the next package.
Project Overview
- Project Name: Tengah General and Community Hospital (TGCH)
- Client: Singapore Ministry of Health (MOH)
- Design-Build Contractor: Ssangyong Engineering & Construction
- Location: Tengah Town, western Singapore
- Project Type: Integrated acute and community hospital
- Contract Value: $2.15 billion
- Bed Capacity: 1,534 beds
- Configuration: 3 basement levels, 9 storeys above ground
- Site Area: Not publicly disclosed
- Floor Area: Not publicly disclosed
- Construction Duration: 63 months, including design
- Target Completion: Early 2030s
- Future Operator: National University Health System (NUHS)
- Procurement Model: Design and build, with ancillary systems such as district cooling tendered as separate design-build-operate-maintain packages
- Environmental Certification: Not publicly disclosed
Project Team
Tengah General and Community Hospital, Singapore
- Client: Singapore Ministry of Health
- Hospital Planning Oversight: MOH Holdings (MOHH)
- Future Operator: National University Health System (NUHS)
- Design-Build Contractor: Ssangyong Engineering & Construction
- Design Consultant (architecture, C&S and M&E engineering, medical planning): DP Architects
- District Cooling Design-Build-Operate-Maintain Contractor: Not yet awarded, tender closed June 2026
Aljada Megacommunity, Sharjah
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