NCS has launched its AI Mission Centre, with plans to expand its workforce of Intelligentisation Forward-Deployed Engineers (iFDEs) from 100 to more than 300 over the next two years. The centre aims to help public and private organisations move AI applications into live operations by embedding specialist engineers within customer teams.
Alongside the launch, the company has signed three memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with Changi Airport Group (CAG), the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) and Life3 Biotech. Covering AI applications in airport operations, healthcare and biomanufacturing, these agreements provide industry-specific projects for developing and deploying the technology.
Embedded engineering teams to support enterprise AI deployment
The NCS AI Mission Centre brings together industry specialists, forward-deployed engineers and AI platform teams to address operational challenges within customer organisations. Their work will focus on identifying priority problems, redesigning workflows, and testing and deploying AI applications securely in live environments. NCS describes iFDEs as AI specialists with industry expertise who can work across different technology vendors. Embedded directly within client teams, these engineers will help translate operational requirements into AI applications suited to specific business environments, with the company planning to meet its workforce expansion target through internal reskilling and external recruitment.
Working alongside the iFDEs will be teams of NCS AI Natives, referred to internally as “speedboats”. These teams will support customer projects through rapid experimentation and the development of AI applications, complementing the engineering expertise provided by the forward-deployed specialists.
To support the secure integration of AI into digital workflows and physical operations, the centre will draw on the NCS Sunshine.AI suite of products and platforms. Sunshine.core provides what the company describes as a sovereign-ready foundation for building, operating and governing enterprise AI agents, while Sunshine.commanderAI enables robots from different manufacturers to work together on operational tasks. NCS also plans to turn successful customer deployments into reusable products and capabilities that can be applied across other organisations and markets.
Three industry agreements cover airport safety, patient care and biomanufacturing
Under its agreement with Changi Airport Group, NCS will enhance and scale iFerret, an intelligent runway surveillance system jointly developed by the two organisations to monitor for Foreign Object Debris (FOD) on airport runways. The collaboration will incorporate advanced AI technologies, with operational requirements developed and tested in actual airport environments before global deployment.
In healthcare, NCS will work with the Institute of Mental Health to explore and jointly develop digital applications that enhance patient care and support healthcare workers. One of the first initiatives is Bio-ID, an AI-powered facial recognition solution designed to strengthen patient identification and support timely awareness of safety considerations in inpatient care settings. IMH will validate Bio-ID within its wards and provide insights to refine the technology for broader deployment across other healthcare and care environments.
The agreement with Life3 Biotech focuses on applying AI to biomanufacturing, with both organisations set to jointly develop capabilities that combine AI with advanced bioprocessing technologies to optimise production processes involving micro-organisms. The collaboration aims to improve production efficiency, scalability and sustainability while laying the foundation for intelligent biomanufacturing infrastructure.
Workforce reskilling forms part of the expansion
To build internal capability, NCS provides AI fluency training to all employees, covering prompt engineering, responsible AI practices and working with AI agents to improve productivity. More than 2,000 AI practitioners are also receiving continuous advanced training in building and deploying AI agent systems for production environments. Alongside these training initiatives, the company is redesigning software engineering roles to combine business analysis, software development and testing capabilities within more versatile, AI-enabled teams, with the changes intended to help clients obtain results from technology deployments sooner.
Early-career talent development forms another part of the workforce programme. NCS operates three hands-on work-study pathways, Nucleus, Fusion and Ignite, for university, polytechnic and ITE graduates respectively. These programmes include bond-free pathways and provide participants with opportunities to develop hands-on AI skills early in their careers.
The AI Mission Centre was officially launched on 29 October, with Josephine Teo, Singapore’s Minister for Digital Development and Information, officiating the event. NCS CEO Sam Liew described the expansion of its forward-deployed engineering workforce as an investment in employees who can translate AI developments into everyday applications. He also outlined the company’s ambition to make Singapore a place where AI is deployed at scale, with capabilities that serve local organisations and solutions that can be applied internationally.
