East-West Power’s new headquarters building in Ulsan, outfitted with a 

smart office. (Photos:EWP)

East-West Power (EWP) has pledged to rise to a global energy company by relaunching its business on June 16 after relocating its headquarters from Samseong-dong, southeastern Seoul, to the innovative new city of Ulsan. 

In line with the launch of an era of Ulsan, EWP has become the first public entity to introduce the smart office to make it a working space for creating a horizontal corporate environment for enhancing communications and cooperation between EWP executives and staff as well as spurring creativity.

A smart office refers to the converging of advanced IT technologies and gadgets designed to dramatically improve work productivity by allowing employees to work at any place in an efficient fashion, departing from the conventional method of working in a fixed place. 

President Chang Joo-ok of East-West Power 

In this regard, EWP operates flexible seating for team heads and team members in lieu of the existing cubicle style by tearing down partitions between departments and individuals. 

For creating its smart office, EWP has installed a virtual desktop infrastructure, fixed mobile convergence, and cloud printing. The virtual desktop infrastructure is designed so the center can offer each user their own virtual desktop and data storage space, which are safe from outside hacking and come in handy for online and offline work. The fixed mobile convergence system substitutes each person’s cellular phone for the existing extension phone line to make it suitable for the flexible seating system. The cloud printing system offers a paperless office space by allowing the printing of documents without place limitations while maximizing office space and strengthening security. 

The new EWP headquarters is a low-carbon green structure that can reduce energy consumption by 20 percent compared to the first-class energy efficiency rating, or 234kWh/m2 yearly by minimizing the “heat island effect” that results in the urban parts of a place being hotter than suburban areas due to the lining of skyscrapers through the harmonious placement of buildings with major wind directions. 

The structure is designed to replace 16 percent of its energy consumption with new and renewable energy sources by operating a 997kW-class geothermal heating and cooling system; a 70kW-class photovoltaic power facility; installing a light-collecting system in the underground parking area; and small wind power-operated street lamps. They are expected to have an effect of reducing some 1,004 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.   

An artificial turf sporting ground; an outdoor music concert hall; a basketball court; an outdoor fountain; a tennis court; an auditorium; and other cultural and sporting facilities of the new headquarters site are open to the general public in the interests of Ulsan residents.

An EWP official said his company will devote itself to aggressively nurturing local gifted manpower as a member of the local community and conducting volunteering activities as well as contributing to reinvigorating the local economy in an effort to catapult Ulsan, a force behind the nation’s economic strides, to a global energy mecca. 

EWP has recruited 11 percent of its freshmen employees for the first half of 2014 among graduates of Ulsan-based universities by giving them additional points as part of its efforts to attract manpower from the Ulsan metropolitan area.