The heavy metal man: A precious undertaking

In this series, people from all walks of life offer an inside - often unfiltered - take on their livelihoods and what keeps them going in their jobs. In this instalment, hear from Mr Sim Tian Jie, a vault manager at The Reserve, on what it takes to handle precious metals at a large-capacity vault in Singapore, as told to The Sunday Times.

- Sharon Salim Business Correspondent

Mr Sim with blocks of silver. The metal is mainly used for industrial purposes, especially in things like laptops, mobile phones and solar panels. At today's prices, one ounce of gold can buy you about 90 ounces of silver, he says.

I am 43, and I make sure that the gold and silver at The Safe House - the vault facility at The Reserve are guarded safely and accounted for. The facility in Changi has a maximum capacity of around 10,000 tonnes.

People often think that working with gold and silver is all glitter, but it's a very laborious job. Half of my job involves hand-carrying the precious metals, and the other half comprises administrative work to ensure the metals are properly documented. I also handle customer inquiries.

It's important to keep fit, as the physical handling of precious metals, primarily gold and silver, can be strenuous work. I could be carrying a 30kg block of silver at any one time. We can process a couple of tonnes of metal a day.

When I reach the office in the morning, the first thing I do is to check the emails for inquiries. Major trading in precious metals typically occurs in US and Europe timings, so inquiries from clients will come in through the night. Most of our clients are based overseas.

They ask: "How can I ship my precious metals here? How much does it cost to store them here? How safe is the vault and what are our safety protocols?"

They also ask what happens if we, the employees, steal their metals. I will tell them that most of us are longtime employees, and the core team has been here for more than eight years.

We started out with three vault managers, and there are six of us now. I have been here for 13 years, and some of us are shareholders of the company so it's in our interest to make sure everything goes well. One of the things we look for in hiring is that the person has to be very trustworthy. A small act of theft will break that trust.