Gamuda Group strengthens regional innovation with Google Cloud AI
08 Mar 2024 | Bernama

Kuala Lumpur, March 8 (Bernama) – A regional leader in engineering and property development Gamuda Berhad (Gamuda) today, announced an expansion of its long-standing collaboration with Google Cloud to make enterprise-grade generative AI (GenAI) capabilities accessible and useful to its employees.

This collaboration empowers Gamuda employees to work more efficiently and innovatively in delivering engineering, construction, and public infrastructure projects in the region.

Having built a unified data platform and modernised its workloads on Google Cloud, Gamuda is deepening its commitment to digitalising and redefining the construction landscape with GenAI.

Gamuda Berhad Group chief digital officer John Lim Ji Xiong described the collaboration with Google Cloud as not only changing how their infrastructure projects are built, but also creating much stakeholder interest across projects in Malaysia, Australia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, and wider industry.

“Some of our clients have recently opted for our systems over their traditional ones, and by embracing technology, we’re also pioneering exciting digital career paths for our engineers,” he said in a joint statement by Gamuda Berhad and Google Cloud issued in Petaling Jaya near here, today.

Gamuda with long track records of groundbreaking achievements such as the innovative design of the SMART Tunnel, a dual-purpose stormwater management and roadway project and world’s first Autonomous Tunnel Boring Machine (A-TBM), has consistently pushed the boundaries of what’s possible using technology.

He said these achievements marked a monumental shift from traditional practices toward a pioneering vision of digital- and AI-driven engineering and construction excellence.

Meanwhile, Google Cloud country manager Malaysia Patrick Wee expressed excitement to be supporting Gamuda’s gen AI-powered advancements across its regional projects.

“Construction has traditionally been a labour-and process-intensive industry with lengthy project cycles, but Gamuda has swiftly transformed this paradigm by embracing digitalisation and gen AI at scale on Google Cloud.

“Their merging diverse data streams to solve real-world challenges while saving time and costs, they’re setting a powerful example for enterprises seeking rapid innovation through the convergence of modern infrastructure, data analytics, security, and AI,” he said.

Explaining further, the statement noted that central to this transformation is the Gamuda Innovation Hub, a long-term initiative that fosters a culture of continuous learning and experimentation, inculcating strong competencies in Google Cloud technologies.

The Hub has upskilled Gamuda’s workforce, transforming a team of 50 engineers from traditional industry backgrounds into cloud architects, data engineers, software engineers, and AI engineers.

“Equipped with the skills to leverage Google Cloud’s intuitive suite of tools, these engineers develop custom systems that seamlessly integrate across all of Gamuda’s projects.

“This commitment to nurturing in-house talent ensures a workforce that possesses not only the technological expertise but also a deep understanding of construction industry needs, ultimately driving rapid innovation,” according the statement.

Another prime example is the unified data platform that provides Gamuda’s design, engineering, finance, supply chain, and field operations teams with an all-encompassing, real-time perspective of project workflows.

This was also enabled by the successful migration of Gamuda’s SAP enterprise resource planning systems from Amazon Web Services to Google Cloud, and the implementation of Google Cloud’s Security Command Center for an additional layer of cybersecurity.

“Combining the growing dataset from these workflows with Google Cloud’s enterprise-grade GenAI will empower agile, data-driven decision-making across complex, long-term regional infrastructure projects.

“The adoption of GenAI capabilities which isn’t limited to a select few (but) capabilities on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, have enabled Gamuda to create tools for everyone involved in its project ecosystem,” the statement said.

Click here to read Google Cloud’s news article.