Planning for National Day Parade (NDP) each year starts even before the previous year's NDP is over. For NDP 2020, the planning began in July 2019. The nation's 55th National Day would be celebrated at The Float @ Marina Bay. The Committee was working hard on finalising the concepts by the end of January 2020.

But then came the bolt out of the blue! The Government imposed a “Circuit Breaker” in April 2020 following a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases. The NDP plans that had been so painstakingly made had to be scrapped. It was not enough to just scale down the show at the Float; it would have to be a radically different concept. The various NDP committees had to return to the drawing board.

Eventually, the decision was made. If COVID-19 risks meant that we could not bring Singaporeans together for NDP, we had to bring NDP to Singaporeans in their homes. We had to still be able to celebrate our resilience and unity as one people. Guided by this, the NDP 2020 committee developed plans for celebrations in the heartland to pay tribute to healthcare workers and frontline fighters. There would be mobile columns along five routes and fireworks at over 10 sites around Singapore.

Among the NDP committees, the Show Committee was most challenged by the radical change to NDP 2020. Instead of an outdoor show at the Float, it would now have to be an indoor show. But even as they quickly developed an indoor show, new issues kept popping. Among other things, the costume vendors were in a quandary because they relied on workers from Malaysia to do the tailoring, but factories were shut and non-essential services had to cease in April.

With just four months to National Day, there was one key question on everyone's minds: Can we pull this off in such a short time?

NDP 2020 Re-Imagined

Faced with the prospect of many potential show-stoppers, Chairman of NDP 2020 Show Committee COL Wong Shi Ming and his team made a radical decision. The show would be broken down into as many smaller segments as possible. The usual four acts of NDP shows would be divided into 12 segments, ranging from one to three minutes each. This would allow the number of performers on stage at any one time and the number of crew and other support personnel to be kept within the limits set by SMM. The modular nature also offered more flexibility and it would be easier and faster to adapt and adjust should there be other disruptions down the road. Each segment group could also give quick feedback on its progress to the main Show Committee after every rehearsal and this helped to speed up rehearsals. The Committee had found a practical and agile response to the COVID limitations for the NDP Show by making it modular.

With the demands of the new NDP concept and a compressed timeline, the Committee had to adopt quicker work processes and emphasise transparent collaboration. Sharing of information with other stakeholders became significantly faster than in previous NDPs because decisions had to be made urgently. The NDP 2020 Show Committee held daily hot-syncs and functional group level meetings, and weekly committee reviews. These frequent and intensely focused interactions involving all stakeholders ensured that activities were well coordinated, bottlenecks spotted early and remedial measures taken promptly.

On 9 August 2020, it was clear that while COVID-19 had stopped the public from gathering at the Float and around Marina Bay to watch the parade and show, it had not stopped them from enjoying the NDP in other ways. The pandemic had compelled the NDP organisers to press the refresh button and embrace agileness. With determination and innovativeness, they had re-imagined how to bring NDP to Singaporeans in a way that invoked patriotism and pride. The spirit of resilience, fortitude and perseverance conveyed through an NDP celebration against heavy odds was not lost on Singaporeans.