The Challenge: Moving 100+ Senior Leaders from Curiosity to Conviction
Sembcorp's Gas Related & Services leadership wanted more than a general introduction to Generative AI. With over 100 senior leaders, including the CEO and his entire C-suite, committing two full days out of office as part of an internal AI Learning Festival, the workshop had to earn its place on that calendar. It needed to move a room of experienced executives from curiosity to conviction, and give them concrete ways to apply AI within their own functions, from utilities asset management to corporate affairs and business development.
The content also had to hold up under scrutiny. This was not an audience that would be satisfied with generic demos. They needed frameworks they could use to evaluate AI use cases for themselves, and a realistic account of where AI helps and where it still needs a human check, especially in a heavily regulated energy business.
Why Heicoders Academy: An Established Partner Who Already Knew the Business
Sembcorp already had Heicoders Academy running their GA100 programme, so extending that relationship into a full-scale leadership workshop was a natural next step rather than a fresh vendor search. Having already seen our instructors in action and the quality of our curriculum, Sembcorp's leadership had a level of trust that a new provider would have had to earn from scratch.
That existing relationship also meant our instructors were not starting cold. We already understood Sembcorp's business context and the kinds of AI use cases relevant to their teams, which let us build a workshop that spoke directly to their operations, from utilities asset management to corporate affairs and business development, rather than a generic session bolted on for a one-off event.
Our track record customising GA100 for regulated, high-stakes industries reinforced that confidence, and gave Sembcorp certainty that the session would hold up in front of a room of this seniority.
The Solution: A Full-Day Leadership Workshop for 100+ Senior Leaders
Heicoders Academy designed and delivered a full-day, customised Generative AI workshop for more than 100 members of Sembcorp's Gas Related & Services leadership team, including the CEO, his C-suite and Heads of Department. The curriculum covered:
- The business case for AI: Grounding the session in four value levers, growing revenue, reducing cost, managing risk and sharpening decisions, illustrated with real-world case studies such as Octopus Energy's Kraken platform, Klarna's AI customer service pivot and DBS's internal Gen AI rollout.
- How Generative AI actually works: Demystifying how large language models generate responses, why hallucination happens, and what reasoning models change about how leaders should prompt.
- A framework for harnessing AI in the workforce: A two-stage approach, prioritising tasks by value and frequency, then governing them by stakes and reversibility, so leaders could decide where AI should advise, augment, automate, or stay out entirely.
- Hands-on application: Live exercises across voice generation, AI-assisted data analytics, AI agents such as Manus AI, and Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio, including a closing activity where participants built and deployed their own small application.
- AI governance and risk: A practical session on hallucination, bias, prompt injection and jailbreaking, each anchored to scenarios specific to Sembcorp's own operations, such as contractor safety audits and client-facing email agents.
The workshop was led by Beh Min Yan, our Chief Executive Officer, previously an AI Engineer at GoJek and a Quantitative Researcher at Credit Suisse, alongside Chan Yu Siang, our Chief Academic Officer.
Results: Impressed Leadership and a Renewed GA100 Commitment
Given the seniority of the room and the two full days that leadership had committed to the festival, the bar for this session was high. Sembcorp's management team came away impressed with the depth and relevance of the content, and were appreciative of how directly it connected to their own business.
That confidence translated into a continued partnership. Sembcorp's leadership reaffirmed their support for our GA100 programme and will continue sending more of their people through the course.
What's Next: Continuing to Send Leaders and Teams Through GA100
Sembcorp will continue sending participants to our GA100 programme following this workshop, building on the foundation set during the AI Learning Festival.
