Major Hazards Symposium 2025

Mr. Bernard Nee is Deputy President (Industry & Community), Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). He assumed the role on 1 April 2023 after being appointed Vice President (Industry & Community) on 1 Jan 2022. The group is responsible for industry and future sensing, corporate communications, as well as collaborations with companies and agencies for applied learning and research. Bernard actively engages companies, trade associations, government agencies and various interest groups to advance SIT’s mission and vision.

He brings along deep experience garnered from previous leadership roles at the Economic Development Board (EDB), National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Energy Market Authority (EMA). As the Deputy Chief Executive of EMA (2012-2021), he managed over $200 million in energy R&D funding, and forged partnerships with PSA Singapore, Sembcorp Industries, Keppel Offshore & Marine, SP Group and Shell to nurture the energy ecosystem. His team launched the Energy Story (a national blueprint enabling Singapore’s energy transformation), introduced regulatory sandboxes, nurtured a competitive industry workforce and pushed Singapore’s solar and energy storage ambitions. His portfolio also included oversight of EMA’s corporate functions.

Prior to 2012, he was with EDB for 18 years, where he assumed senior management roles as Executive Director in charge of Natural Resources, Strategic and Corporate Planning, as well as the Chief Information Officer. He seeded a team to incubate high-growth clusters that could contribute $1 billion to Singapore’s GDP within 10 years. In 2005, he was seconded to the NRF as the pioneering Director to establish policies, processes, and systems to manage the $5 billion RIE2010 budget.

A recipient of the EDB scholarship, Bernard possesses a Masters in Management of Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and graduated with an MSc and BSc (with University Honours) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Jaime Lim is a Chartered Engineer and Professional Process Safety Engineer with the Institution of Chemical Engineers. She is currently the Director of the Major Hazards Department (MHD) and the OSH Specialist Department at the Ministry of Manpower. She oversees the safety case regime for the oil and gas industry and leads the implementation of national occupational hygiene, occupational medicine and engineering safety programmes. 

Senior Assistant Commissioner (SAC) Daniel Seet took over as Deputy Commissioner of the Future Technology & Public Safety (FTPS) cluster in SCDF on 1 May 2024. He currently oversees the transformation and capability development to prepare the SCDF for future challenges. This involves the adoption of cutting-edge technologies that will become critical in future operations, as well as driving the efforts to digitalise the organisation.

Prior to that, Daniel was Deputy Commissioner of the Operations & Resilience (O&R) cluster. Other command and staff posts that he had held across his 26 years of service with the SCDF include stints as Head of Operations Branch for 4th SCDF Division, Commander of 1st SCDF Division, Director of the Crisis Preparedness Directorate under the Ministry of Home Affairs, and Director of SCDF’s Operations Department. He first joined SCDF as a National Service (Full-time) in 1998 before becoming a full-time regular in early 2001.

Dr. Lim Kok Hwa is an Associate Professor and Director, Professional Officers Division (POD) at Singapore Institute of Technology. Over the past decade, he has taught a variety of courses, including Industrial Chemical Processes, and Industrial Chemical and Biological Plant Safety. He is also experienced in emergency/contingency planning, and is involved in many committees dealing with safety matters and safety reviews. He received a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) in Computational Science and Chemistry, and a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the National University of Singapore. He later obtained his doctoral degree from the Technische Universität München (TUM) in Germany.

Dr. Lock is a Professor (Engineering) at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and the Head of its Energy Efficiency Technology Centre. He plays an active role in energy efficiency and sustainability, being the Chairman of Accreditation Committee for Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) and the Co-Chair of Steering Committee of Singapore Certified Energy Managers (SCEM) Scheme. He is an Accredited Tier Designer awarded by the Uptime Institute. He is a specialist consulting engineer in the areas of mission-critical electrical design, power quality, EMC, and safety. He conducted many power failure investigations of data centres.

Professor Lock has a unique blend of practicing and academic experience acquired through a career which is equally split between the industry and the academia. He received both his B.Sc. (1975) and Ph.D. (1979) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, UK. He was a faculty at the Department of Electrical Engineering, National University of Singapore for 17 years when he left to set up his consulting practice in 1997. He returned to the academia as a professor at SIT in 2016 after 20 years in the industry.

He is a registered Professional Engineer (Electrical) and served as a Board Member of the Professional Engineers Board, Singapore for 14 years. He is a Fellow of Academy of Engineering Singapore and an Honorary Fellow of the ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organizations.

He is the co-Laureate of the 2021 WFEO Medal for Excellence in Engineering Education awarded by the World Federation of Engineering Organisations. He received the Public Service Medal (2015) and the Public Service Star (2020).

Balamurali Kumar is Senior Director of Manufacturing Excellence at STMicroelectronics, with over 32 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. 

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the National University of Singapore and has led diverse portfolios spanning Process, Equipment and Device Engineering, Process control, Technology and product transfers, Fab start-up, Fab Operations, and strategic projects management. In his current role, he drives digital transformation initiatives, integrating Lean Manufacturing, artificial intelligence, data analytics, automation and robotics to modernise and future-proof manufacturing systems. 

As a Lean champion, he focuses on continuous improvement, workforce transformation, which includes upskilling and reskilling, people engagement, growth mindset and critical thinking.

Leslie is a Safety Case Specialist with the Major Hazards Department at the Ministry of Manpower, overseeing the Safety Case regime for Major Hazard Installations in Singapore. Drawing from his background as a Process Engineer in the petrochemical industry, he brings real-world insights to industrial safety, extending beyond compliance to address emerging challenges in our changing environment. Daily, Leslie conducts inspections and audits, focusing not only on regulatory requirements but also on understanding how environmental changes affect workplace safety. 

With both industry experience and regulatory expertise, Leslie's sharing will help facilities navigate safety requirements effectively. His practical approach focuses on preparing organisations for future challenges, including climate-related impacts, while ensuring operations remain both efficient and safe.

Dah Ching is a highly accomplished Safety Professional with over 20 years of expertise in Technical Safety, Process Safety Management, and Incident Investigation, complemented by a special focus on Operational Technology (OT) cybersecurity. As a Principal Process Safety Engineer with Aster, he has been instrumental in integrating cybersecurity risk assessment into process safety and building bridges between HSSE, Process, and OT teams. His extensive experience includes conducting cross-business and cross-border HSSE audits, developing safety standards, facilitating risk reviews, and leading incident investigations with a focus on causal reasoning. He is also a Professional Engineer (Chemical) and an IChemE Professional Process Safety Engineer.

Dr. SK Mahasin Alam is a Lead Professional Officer at Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore. His current research focuses on hydrogen safety - modelling of hydrogen dispersion (hydrogen concentration decay, accumulation of hydrogen in and enclosed environment, hydrogen plume dispersion length) and flame (visible flame length and width, radiative heat flux) characteristics. He obtained his PhD in computational chemistry from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

His research interests are Na and Li storage mechanisms, diffusion of Na and Li in organic batteries, and electronic properties and diffusion of dopants in doped semiconductors. He also focuses on the structural and electronic properties of Ge & Si nanowires and carbon nanotubes, interactions and reaction mechanisms of surface species on catalyst surfaces using the Density Functional Theory (DFT) method, and photoluminescence properties of graphene quantum dots and polymers using the time-dependent DFT method. Additionally, his interests include Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship studies of biomolecules for their bioactivities, molecular docking, and pharmacophore mapping.

Lee has about 26 years of working experience in consultancy related to risk management, HSE and sustainability. Lee has been stationed in various locations in the Asia Pacific region; hence Lee is the risk expert in the region in which he supporting the authorities and energy companies, etc. in Asia Pacific with respect to practical risk solutions and effective risk management. In this process, he always makes use of advanced concepts to achieve better engineering design and operational performance. 

Currently Lee is the General Manager of Gexcon Malaysia cum the Business Development for Asia Pacific. Before that, Lee was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of DNV Sustainability Excellence Center (2021) and a global partner in ERM and led the safety consultancy business in China and North Asia (2017-2021). Lee was the Head of Department for Safety & Risk Management Advisory for DNV GL Oil & Gas in China. He was also the founder of DNV’s Safety & Risk Management business in China, and built up the consultancy business (2002-2016). On 2014-2015, Lee led a team in performing safety management assessment (including Process Safety Management) on four selected refineries in China, and received high recognition from the Chinese National Authority (SAWS) and NOCs in China. 

From 2009-2012, he was engaged by Singapore governmental agencies as the internal consultant with respect to the Jurong Island version 2.0 initiative and Gas Safety Case implementation. From 2023-2025, Lee becomes an expert member in the Singapore standard committee, contributing to the development of national Hydrogen technical standards in Singapore.

Dr. Salim has more than 25 years’ experience in safety, both in the public and private sectors. He is currently leading the Process Safety and Sustainable Systems (PS3) group within ISCE² with an emphasis on Process Safety. His main research interests include PHA methodologies, combustible dust, fires and explosions, battery safety, hydrogen and ammonia safety, hybrid LCA-Safety methodologies and inherent safety for modular process technologies.

He is also active in the development of several national safety standards in Singapore and is also a member of ISOTC 261/WG6 on additive manufacturing EHS. He is also an adjunct Associate Professor with Singapore Institute of Technology, a practicing Professional Engineer, a member of the Workplace Safety & Health Council’s Chemical Industry Committee, an Engineering Accreditation Board Evaluation Team member under the Institution of Engineers Singapore, an Editorial Advisory Board Member for the Journal of Energy and Safety Technology (JEST), and an active reviewer for several Process Safety Journals.

Mr. Robert J. Weber is a Registered Professional Engineer and the President/CEO and Founder of PSRG.  He has more than 34 years of industrial experience. He has consulted numerous Clients in the oil and gas, petrochemical/chemical, power and energy, food and pharma, and other industries domestically and internationally on a wide variety of process safety and risk management topics, including asset integrity management. He holds an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Teng Chong Seng is a Senior Professional Officer at the Singapore Institute of Technology, bringing over 40 years of extensive industry experience. He has a distinguished career in leading enterprise resilience, environmental sustainability, workplace safety and health, process safety functions, and business continuity readiness across the Asia Pacific Region. Chong Seng has successfully involved in the startups of multimillion-dollar greenfield projects in semiconductor wafer fabrication and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Throughout his career, Chong Seng has expanded his domain expertise to encompass broader knowledge in the life cycle of supply chain management, and project management. He is actively involved with professional organisation and is the President of the Society of Loss Prevention for Process Industries. He attains the professional membership of Fire Safety Manager’s Association Singapore, and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, UK. Chong Seng holds a Master of Science in Environmental Management from the National University of Singapore and bachelor’s degrees in environmental technology (DEAKIN University), and Business Administration (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).