Standing tall in a field of engineers

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate women engineers like Goh Siew Lee who use their expertise to keep Singaporeans safe.

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On International Women’s Day, we celebrate women engineers like Goh Siew Lee who use their expertise to keep Singaporeans safe.

“I’m not a sweet young thing!” Goh Siew Lee jests that at 1.7m, she is too tall to fit into the stereotype of a petite woman in Singapore. “I’m not the type who would get bullied,” quipped Siew Lee, who grew up between two brothers.

Indeed, Siew Lee stands tall – head and shoulders above many people. She is a doting mother to two young girls, and manages to balance her work and take care of her family without the ubiquitous stay-in helper.

The trained engineer and Deputy Director of Joint Capabilities (Sense-making and Surveillance) leads a team of about 20 full-timers in HTX. She mostly deals with surveillance and CCTVs. Without a doubt, Siew Lee also stands tall in the male dominated field of engineering.

Every time the footage helps to prevent or solve a crime, I feel proud that I have helped to keep Singaporeans safe and it makes me even more passionate about my work!

The proof of her team’s capability and contributions was articulated most recently in Parliament, when Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam shared during the Budget debate that the installation of almost 90,000 cameras in major public locations like HDB estates had helped to solve more than 4,900 cases as of December 2020.

Her team had managed the Herculean project to install the cameras island-wide.

Said Siew Lee, “This was by far the largest-scale project I worked on. Every time the footage helps to prevent or solve a crime, I feel proud that I have helped to keep Singaporeans safe and it makes me even more passionate about my work!"

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Goh Siew Lee (in yellow) leads a team of 20 full-timers, managing projects such as the installation of almost 90,000 cameras in major public locations. (Photo Credit: HTX)

Nearly 20 years in CCTV

She has worked in the field of CCTVs and in surveillance for 18 years.

Upon graduation from the Nanyang Technological University’s Electrical and Electronic Engineering faculty in 2003 as one of its few female graduates, Siew Lee worked in a company which installed CCTVs in the MRTs and LRTs.

She joined the police’s technology division in 2007, also working in surveillance projects, and is now with HTX.

She has witnessed how technology transformed the entire industry from the early 2000s, when analog cameras recorded footage on physical video VHS tapes which had to be manually removed and played back on players, to today’s fully digital systems.

And in the wake of global security and terrorist incidents like 911, and the London bomb blasts, her domain expertise has become more important as surveillance becomes a tool to prevent such incidents.

That expertise was honed through years of asking questions, fearlessly speaking up and asserting herself, and getting her hands dirty.

siewlee_3Siew Lee (first row, third from the left) with colleagues at the HTX Launch on 2 Dec 2019. (Photo Credit: Goh Siew Lee)

Overcoming gender bias

Siew Lee shares that when it comes to gender bias, she felt it most during her early days as a young, female engineer. People doubted her ability and at its worst, she was regarded as a “hua ping” – an ornamental vase.

She got around it by rolling up her sleeves and doing all the manual labour which the men were doing, like installing CCTVs in the MRT stations. She would pull cables, choose the connectors, link them up.

“It was about gaining respect and trust. By doing the work myself, I gained knowledge and showed that I knew what I was doing.”

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Goh Siew Lee has spent 18 years in the field of CCTVs and surveillance, gaining respect and trust through doing the work herself. (Photo Credit: HTX)

She was also sent overseas several times, to countries where the culture was even more male-centric in the engineering community, and was largely ignored. Quietly, Siew Lee not only made sure she did her work, she also asked questions so she had a good idea of the entire project. “I could predict what issues they would face,” she said.

In one instance, she said that because she made sure she carried her entire tool bag with her, the men would end up borrowing her tools which further broke down barriers.

“You also need to be very independent and ask a lot of questions to learn. I was never afraid of asking questions or speaking my mind,” she said.

Work and home balance

She loves her engineering job, and manages to balance both work and looking after her two daughters who are aged 5 and 12. With no helper, she says she “leverages on robots” like smart vacuum cleaners to help manage the household.

While support at home is critical, what is more important for Siew Lee is that her workplace respects her family commitments.

“HTX has a very supportive culture. Sometimes, if a meeting over-runs, the people I work with will remind me to go or I would be late in picking up my daughters,” said Siew Lee, who is now busy with projects to make sense of the video camera footage via smart analytics.

Perhaps it can be said that a sweet spot for Siew Lee between home and work, is when her daughter spots a CCTV camera in a carpark and asks her excitedly – “Mummy, is that your project?”

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Siew Lee (right) spending valuable time with her family (Photo Credit: Goh Siew Lee)

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