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What began very much as a regulation to include two residential overseas visits as part of the program has in fact turned out to be a most unique learning experience for each Intake. The overseas visit, typically over a 3 to 5 day arrangement, has now become the high point of the program each year. Each visit has given the opportunity of first hand experience of the host country's largest development schemes, presented by prominent organizations, and delivered by the senior level officers from the respective organizations. Many of these organizations and their respective schemes would not have been accessible if not for the official nature and professional profile of the delegation and its members.
Individual members outside such a delegation would have been unable to secure support and hosting from the said organizations under ordinary circumstances. The profile of the travelling delegation has always been identifiable as a group of participants of various backgrounds and designations representing up to as many as 30-40 organizations, as opposed to a mere graduate student contingent.
In many of these visits and meetings, the senior most personnel of the host organizations have been actively involved in either delivering the briefing sessions or in leading the panel discussions. A welcome address by the top person of the host organization has often been the norm. A notable example of the recognition accorded to our visiting delegations was the welcome address by the President of the National Power Corporation of the Philippines when the residential trip group visited Manila in 1997.
In both the visits to Hanoi in 1993 and to Shanghai in 2000, the respective groups enjoyed full support from Singapore's own Ambassador and Consul-General stationed in these two locations. Moreover, the official governmental and/or embassy support was critical in obtaining the host government and host organizations' agreement to receive the visit and to conduct the briefings and discussion sessions. This level of support for the program continues to exist with the current intakes.
With the added exposure to project development and management practice, either in the regional or the international settings, the visits have been instrumental in raising both the awareness and appreciation of investment scenarios governing real estate development and its management in these host countries.
Brief accounts of the recent residential programmes follow in the below pages.
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"It would have been impossible for any one individual to try to arrange such
a prestigeous trip as this on their own"
"We hope our contact and interaction with our hosts is the beginning of many more
fruitful endeavours in the future"
"The study trip had a considerably well balanced `diet' of educational and business exchange
as well as social interaction"
"The trip was professionally managed and we never felt that we had come as students but instead as a professional conference delegation"
"The trip was of tremendous benefit. It demonstrated effective and collaborative networking between the students, lecturers, and practitioners, right from inception, planning, and coordination all the way through to implementation and successful completion of the overseas study trip."
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