DSTA Academy aims to equip Engineering and Scientific Personnel (ESP) with deep professional knowledge necessary to deliver complex systems as well as raise their professional standing in Singapore.

Due to the complexity of defence capability development in Singapore as well as SAF’s unique operational requirements, our ESP must not only be technically competent in their respective professions but they also need to be good systems thinkers and systems engineering practitioners.

We review our programmes and refresh them with new and relevant teaching cases regularly. Lessons learned from projects are incorporated into case studies and shared with our students. To ensure effective learning, we are always seeking out new learning technologies, methodologies and tools to better engage our younger learners.

Academy also promotes a culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing. Experienced staff from Academy’s Information Resources Centre (IRC) and Faculty Heads curate useful resources from the web for our lecturers to use and source for external courses to help them improve their lecturing skills and effectiveness in engaging their students.

Tan Yang How
President DSTA Academy

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• Design and deliver Milestone and Specialised courses for engineering staff in the defence technology community

• Provide course participants with an immersive environment to learn project management and systems engineering

• Develop project case studies as part of systematic knowledge management for the purpose of learning and education

• Publish DSTA Horizons, a repository of DSTA’s diverse expertise in technology and innovative engineering work done

• Provide relevant print and electronic information resources that staff can access conveniently and support research

Faculty Head Zee Sow Wai

“I have learnt many new concepts, adult learning theories, facilitation techniques and design of courses; and believe that using real case studies makes the training relevant, current and practical.”

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Course Manager Kwok Yoong Fui

“Learning the right thing at the start is important so that you will do things correctly, make less mistakes and accomplish more in the end. Academy courses aim to achieve this through getting the best people with the right knowledge to impart the right lessons at the start.”

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Course Manager Wayne Er

“The best teacher in life is experience. DSTA Academy provides me with a perfect platform to share my experiences with our young engineers, align them with core values of DSTA as well as foster esprit de corps in the organization. Most of all, I am helping them empower themselves as learners for a lifetime."

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DSTA Academy’s courses are customised for MINDEF and it includes:

Milestone Courses

The milestone courses aim to transfer the unique experience accumulated from decades of delivering technological solutions to the SAF. They provide training for the engineering and scientific professionals as they progressed in their careers.

The milestone courses include:  

Basic Systems Engineering & Management (BSEM) Course

The BSEM course is the first milestone course attended by DSTA engineers within the first 2 years of their career. The course aims to build up core competencies in Project Management / Systems Engineering, provide an appreciation in key defence technology applications, and to impart the necessary project management soft skills. This will enable DSTA engineers to perform effectively in project teams to deliver defence solutions to MINDEF and the SAF.

Intermediate Systems Engineering & Management (ISEM) Course

The ISEM course aims to prepare experienced Project Engineers to take on the Project Manager role. The course focuses on single system optimisation, application of MINDEF’s Defence Capability Management (DCM) process; impart knowhow to conduct systems engineering trade-off studies, requirement definition and project risk management.

Advanced Systems Engineering & Management (ASEM) Course

The ASEM course is designed to train and equip experienced project managers to assume the role of programme manager. The course addresses the skills, knowledge and attributes required of a DSTA Programme Manager. It covers topics/case studies ranging from the front-end planning stage to system retirement stage based on the MINDEF Defence Capability Management framework. The course focuses on the applications of Systems Thinking, Systems Engineering principles and practices in management of complex capability projects. ASEM covers many real life large scale defence capability development/management challenges, including capability architecting, master-planning, system-of-systems capability definition, acquisition approach, systems integration/development, project risk management and Operation and Support Engineering.

Specialised Courses

The specialised courses, such as Analytic Hierarchy Process, Integrated Logistics Support and System Safety, are short courses that cover more comprehensively and provide for hands-on skills training for specialised systems engineering topic.

Courses for MDES Officers

DSTA Academy has been entrusted to conduct Route of Advancement (ROA) courses for MDES officers to acquire requisite systems engineering competencies. The courses are conducted in conjunction with Academy’s milestone courses and aim to prepare the Military Domain Experts Scheme (MDES) engineers for higher Military Expert (ME) appointments.

 

DSTA Horizons

First published in April 2005, DSTA Horizons is our effort to share DSTA’s innovative engineering work and lessons learnt with the larger defence and technology communities. It also serves as a repository for our diverse expertise and knowledge in various fields of technology.

The DSTA Information Resource Centre (IRC) is an integral part of DSTA Academy. IRC adopts a three-pronged approach to support DSTA management and staff:

1. Build a Relevant Collection.  To enable staff’s search for information, IRC works with technical domain leads to create an up-to-date collection of information resources that goes beyond books, periodicals, and databases – to include standards, MOOCs and DSTA authors and their publications.
2. Enhance Access to Information Resources.  Building a collection is only half the battle won – to extend the collection’s reach, IRC goes beyond the traditional library outreach activities to make the collection more accessible via the use of taxonomies, integrated IT systems, and an upcoming open concept library.
3. Technology Watch and Research Support.  To expand staff’s research, IRC builds upon our librarians’ reference training to leverage on information resource subscriptions and horizon scanning tools to aggregate news and highlight possible trends. 

The DSTA Lecture Series serves as a platform for eminent international and local personalities and technology leaders to share their thoughts and experiences on leadership, innovation, organisation change management and technology adoption.