쌍용건설

Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd has won the single largest overseas railway and subway construction project ever acquired by a Korean firm throughout the more than 40 years of Korea’s overseas construction history.

Ssangyong defeated a consortium comprising companies from three countries, including France, China and Hong Kong, to independently secure the mega subway construction project worth 700 billion won (about US$553 million) on June 22.

Sssangyong will conduct both design and construction work simultaneously for the ‘Design & Build’ project, which entails the construction of a 1.065 km-long subway line linking Little India and Bugis in the heart of Singapore and two subway stations. The project will begin in June with design work, which will take about 17 months to complete. The entire project will take 82 months to finish, as it is slated for completion in March 2016.

“The DTL 921 section,” the largest of the 10 sections for Downtown Line Stage 2 (DTL), was ordered by Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA). The project entails highly sophisticated work since the section will be built in an area where bustling roads and the Rochor Canal intersect at ground level, and where the existing North-East Line subway passes through a mere 5 meters above the project site. It also requires the construction of a box-shaped tunnel structure extending 167 meters for a 10-lane road, which will be constructed under soft ground in the future.

By banking on its technological capacity, Ssangyong will reportedly use a myriad of subway construction methods, including NATM, TBM, and Open Cut, which is unusual for work on a single section. Ssangyong reportedly was able to win the project despite a more than 100 million-dollar hike in the budget from the original estimate by proposing the permanent northward relocation of the Rochor Canal, which crosses the construction section, to ensure stability of soft ground in the locality. This development came about in part because Chairman S. Joon Kim, as Ssangyong’s top manager, stepped up to become a role model by participating in LTA’s Safety Training School (where the top priority is, unsurprisingly, safety) during his visit early this year to the Marina Coastal Expressway’s section 482 being constructed by Ssangyong.