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As befits its strong reputation as the master of overseas construction, Ssangyong Engineering and Construction Co (Ssangyong E&C) received the largest number of overseas awards in the world construction history last year. And it has made a confident start this year.
Ssangyong E&C received eight awards in four nations last year, breaking the world record; the Platinum & Gold Prize at the BCA Construction Productivity Awards 2012 for the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore, the Bronze Prize at the International Design Excellence (IDEA) Awards 2012 in the USA, and various kinds of prizes at the ROSPA Awards 2012 in the UK, the Reddot Design Awards 2012 in Germany and others.
Ssangyong E&C (CEO Kim Suk-joon) is indeed the master of overseas construction. Since founded in 1977, it has completed a total of 131 construction project orders (worth of US$ 8.8 billion) from the US, Japan, Equatorial Guinea and 17 other countries in Asia and the Middle East. Since ranked second in the hotel sector by the US-based global construction magazine ENR in 1998, Ssangyong E&C has remained in the high ranking group. In particular, it has unusual world records in construction of luxury hotels (13,000 guest rooms) and hospitals (8,000 beds).
Number One in Global Luxury Buildings
In 2010, Ssangyong E&C earned international attention and acclaim for its successful completion of the Mariana Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore, often called the “most challenging engineering miracle in 21st century architecture.” This hotel project proceeded at a cost of about 1 trillion won for 27 months using highly-advanced engineering technologies. Ssangyong E&C set a new record of 12 million accident-free hours with this project.
Since its debut in 1980 with the 73-storied Swiss hotel “The Stamford” in Singapore, recorded as the world’s tallest hotel by the Guinness Book at that time, Ssangyong E&C has successfully completed lots of remarkable hotel projects – the Raffles City and many other hotels affiliated to the Hyatt and the Intercontinental, for example – across the world’s popular tourist areas like Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Guam, Dubai and Bali.
Ssangyong E&C has conducted a total of seven development projects in the US. Among them, the Anaheim Marriott Hotel project was recorded as the first overseas investment and development project in Korea, for which the company was involved in the whole package of planning, design and construction works. And, in Dubai, still one of the unfamiliar cities to most Koreans in the 1990s, Ssangyong E&C successfully constructed the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel and the Grand Hyatt Dubai, which paved the way for many Korean constructors to make inroads into the most popular port city of the United Arab Emirates.
Ssangyong E&C’s overseas plant construction began with the rain water drainage facilities in Unayzah, Saudi Arabia in early 1980s. Since then, it has constructed various kinds of industrial facilities such as the Kharg crude oil tanks and the Karanji gas injection facilities in Iran, the Suralaya thermal power station in Indonesia, and the Hadeed iron and steel mill in Saudi Arabia. Especially, the Jubail desalination plant in Saudi Arabia, which Ssangyong E&C won the bid on in March 2008, is known as the world’s largest-scale desalination facility. It is equipped with twenty-seven 30,000-ton class evaporators capable of producing about 800,000 tons of drinking water per day, enough to supply 2.5 million people.
Big Strides Continue toward the World… Exploration of New Markets Accelerated
Ssangyong E&C succeeded in winning an approximately 100 billion won worth of reconstruction bid for Berths 15 to 17A in Karachi Port, Pakistan in January this year. And, for the period of September to October last year, the company won consecutive engineering and construction orders at a combined price of about 600 billion won, including the Mongomo Residence in Equatorial Guinea, the Kurd water supply and purification facilities in Iraq and Yale-NUS College in Singapore.
Ssangyong E&C plans to place the priority on luxury buildings and highly challenging civil engineering projects where the company has strong competitiveness, in resource-rich or developing countries which desperately need social infrastructures. In this regard, Ssangyong E&C is seeking to enhance its planning ability for free construction services and project offers, and explore new markets such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq and Oman along with expansion of its conventional markets.