Samsung E&C Moves Ahead

Company surprises world with its new construction technologies in building Burj Dubai, Incheon Bridge

Samsung E&C is showing off its prowess around the world by continuously employing the new construction technologies it developed in its overseas construction projects, especially in the Burj Dubai project, the world's tallest building when it is completed in the fall. Its technologies are so new and complicated that rival construction firms have a hard time copying them, giving the company a tremendous lead in overseas projects and becoming a great force for the growth of the national economy.
Samsung E&C, a construction arm of the Samsung Group, made its name in the world construction industry in the areas of building super-tall buildings, bridges, high-class civil work and high-tech power generation plants. As a result, the company has reached the pinnacle in the areas of super high-rise buildings and bridges.
The company's advanced technologies for super high-rise buildings is seen in the Burj Dubai building in Dubai, an 800-meter tall building, which required a technology to lift a blue tower weighing 450 tons and 143 meters in length and place it on the top of the building.
The blue tower is made of spires and pinnacles made with steel pipes to sustain the spires. The company had trouble finding space to install tower cranes on the building and furthermore, there was not enough room on top of the building for men to work.
The company lifted up the tower in pieces and assembled them on the 600-meter level of the building and raised the assembled tower 200 meters to the top of the building.
Samsung E&C is engaged in the construction of the Incheon Bridge, the world? sixth longest cable-stayed girder bridge, 238.5 meters high at its peak, making it the fifth tallest in the world.
The company employed the full span-launching method by which the company built the slabs and moved them on barges and lifted them up with floating cranes to load them onto trucks to move them to where they are to be installed. Each of the 336 slabs was 50 meters long, 16 meters wide and 3 meters thick, weighing 1,400 tons. Company officials said they made each 50-meter slab in two days, which generally took a month to make if made with concrete mixed directly.
The company is now engaged in the development of new technologies for building a 3,000 meter-long suspension bridge with some of them in the testing stages.
Vice President Kim Kei-ho said the company won many projects overseas because of its reputation as a builder in the Middle East, some of them key projects, getting a lot of help from its construction technology prowess.
Samsung E&C won overseas construction projects worth $3.7 billion in 2008 including the Palm Jumeirah Village Center project, the power and water treatment facility project, Abu Dhabi Slam Underground Motorway project and the Marina Coastal Highway project in Singapore.
The company plans to win similar overseas projects this year, too, based on the reservoir of competitive high-level construction technologies secured through its construction work in past years.
The company also announced recently that it signed a contract to undertake the Parc 1 project for Skylan Group to build a high-rise building in Yeouido, Seoul, a multi-purpose commercial complex at a total cost of 1.331 trillion won.
The project involves the construction of two high-rises in Yeouido, one 69-stories high and the other 52 stories high, at the old Unification Church parking lot with a total space of 46,465 square meters. Other facilities include an 8-story shopping mall and a 30-story hotel with 400 rooms. The entire space of office and commercial facilities will be 630,361 square meters when completed in 2011, the company said.
The entire investment in the project is expected to run some 2.2 trillion won and the first phase of the project got underway in December last year.
Samsung signed an MOU in May 2006 followed by a contract for the construction of civil work and basic underground work and was able to secure 1.3 trillion won worth of the project this time based on the results of diversified technical tests and negotiations, the company said.
Samsung won a high mark from the project owner for its provision of intensive pre-construction services including the design, technical analysis, calculation of construction period and budgeting, along with its expertise from having built the Burj Dubai and the Samsung headquarters building in Seocho-dong, southern Seoul, all super-sized structures without an inch of mistake.
Parc 1 was designed by a group of architects led by Lord Richard Rogers, a Pritzker Prize winner, and the Skylan Group, a multinational property developer responsible for design, construction and management of the buildings under the project. nw

Vice Chairman Lee Sang-dae of the Samsung E&C