Winning this year InnovPLUS FLAME Award certainly ended the year on a high for Force 21 Academy! Team Academy from Force 21 together with DIOworks, our partnering solutionist were elated when our project name was called out as one of the two winners, not to mention that our name was called out last! Team AcaDIO, made up from Force 21 Academy and DIOworks consisted of Roy, Grace, Chermaine and Simon from F21 Academy and Bryan and Constance from DIOworks.

Looking back, it had been an eventful journey with lots of discussions and meetings to formulate the winning formula. Because of our wide spectrum projects, we require our trainers to constantly upskill themselves due to the various age groups and populations we train and facilitate. Hence, a substantial amount of time had to be shelved for staff upskilling. Once our staff was certified competent, our company will issue a certificate to them. These processes were boringly manual and required a large amount of man hours to complete. As a result, facilitators and administration staff getting burnt out from repetitive work was an incessant issue for us.

We decided that this would be the challenge statement for our submission. Throughout the ensuing meetings that followed, this idea eventually evolved to a far superior one that involves e-assessments, the elderly population and the fitness and health community. The objective was to create a self-directed learning, assessment and certification for staff, fitness trainers, and health-conscious fitness enthusiasts via a cloud based integrated platform that is underpinned by innovative technology levers. Whilst it may sound complicated, the idea was just to create a high tech solution that solves our pain points. Team AcaDIO unanimously agreed that this was the proposal that we are going to present on D-Day.

It was indeed a nerve wreaking experience presenting to a professional panel of judges, Assoc Prof Lee Wee Leong, Ms Iris Tee and Mr. John Augustine Ong, all whom boasted vast experience across various industries and their far-sightedness on technology and wellness. After the presentation, we congratulated ourselves with several pats on our backs and come what may at the end of the day.

It was a long and anxious wait, one that was filled with anticipation and hopefulness. When the results were announced, we were jumping with joy! Our invincible teamwork paid off for the first stage and we won the InnovPLUS FLAME Award 2019! It was an incredulous feeling, almost surreal but we had immersed confidence in our solution that we would emerged victorious.