Developing Thailand's first fully integrated smart district.

One Bangkok is Thailand’s first fully integrated smart urban district: 1.8 million square metres of mixed-use development designed to serve more than 100,000 people daily.

The scale of what was being attempted had no regional precedent, and integrating energy, water, telecommunications, predictive maintenance, security, traffic and parking systems into a unified operational framework driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) was a first for Southeast Asia.

TCC Technology, the smart services subsidiary of TCC Group and the entity responsible for One Bangkok’s smart services, lacked sufficient in-house expertise to deliver a programme of this complexity. Hitachi Asia was engaged to lead the smart city programme, and in turn brought in ddx to source and manage a specialist on-site PMO team capable of managing 22 complex smart services work packages under significant delivery pressure. The programme also involved Frasers Property as a key stakeholder, adding cross-organisational coordination to an already demanding environment.

The objective was to design and operationalise a Smart Services PMO capable of managing One Bangkok’s integrated smart city framework from the ground up.

This required recruiting a specialist team, establishing governance and coordination structures across multiple organisations, and ensuring integration across 22 smart services work packages, all within a programme environment where the structures themselves were being defined as delivery was already underway.

The PMO needed to function as the connective tissue between TCC Technology, Hitachi Asia and Frasers Property, maintaining visibility, alignment and momentum across one of the most complex urban development programmes in the region.

ddx was engaged by Hitachi Asia to source and manage a local, on-site smart services PMO team. Working in partnership with Forviz, ddx recruited a core leadership structure comprising a Project Director, System Architect, Devices and Sensors Engineer, Senior Scheduler and Master Systems Integration Project Manager.

Before deployment, ddx undertook a detailed discovery phase to understand the status of existing work packages, programme dependencies and stakeholder expectations. In parallel, ddx led a comprehensive recruitment and vetting process to support the wider organisational structure of approximately 120 personnel required across the programme.

Once operational, the PMO coordinated delivery across TCC Technology, Hitachi Asia and Frasers Property, managing day-to-day execution, maintaining programme alignment and providing the governance structure that kept 22 concurrent work packages coherent.

The Smart Services PMO provided the governance and coordination structure that One Bangkok’s delivery required, managing 22 concurrent work packages across a programme workforce of approximately 120, spanning energy, IoT, security, telecommunications and infrastructure systems.

Establishing coherent delivery across three principal organisations, TCC Technology, Hitachi Asia and Frasers Property, with no prior working relationship at this scale was the central operational achievement. The PMO defined the protocols, maintained programme alignment and created the visibility that allowed a highly complex, multi-vendor programme to progress in a controlled and measurable way.

The most significant result, however, was the transition that followed. ddx’s performance during the Hitachi Asia phase gave TCC Technology the confidence to appoint ddx as its direct smart services delivery partner, taking full responsibility for systems integration and programme governance through to One Bangkok’s opening in October 2024. That continuation is documented in the One Bangkok case study.

The primary challenge was coordinating a large, multi-disciplinary delivery organisation across three principal stakeholders, TCC Technology, Hitachi Asia and Frasers Property, none of whom had previously collaborated at this scale or in this context.

In the absence of established working norms, the PMO had to define the rules of engagement, role boundaries, communication protocols and escalation paths, while managing live delivery simultaneously. The two activities were running in parallel from day one.

The lesson is consistent with the insight gained: no technical solution, however well designed, compensates for weak governance or an unclear team structure. Getting those foundations right early was what made continuity of delivery possible, and ultimately what positioned ddx to take on full responsibility for the programme’s next phase.