A consortium led by Korea Expressway Corp. (KEC) has succeeded in winning a project management consulting contract in the area of civil engineering projects overseas worth 13.5 billion won on Aug. 1, the highway company said recently.

The highway company said the consortium, which includes Seoul City, Pyonghwa Engineering, and Saman Co., won the project ordered by the Brunei Economic Development Authority, which is the first such project won by KEC. The project involves the design and construction of a bridge 2.8 km long linking Muara Island near Brunei and an access road 2.2 km long with supplemental facilities and their subsequent maintenance for fives years and seven months.

KEC will push to secure more such PMC projects in the future so that Korean construction firms can go abroad and do the same. 

The company will invest 70.5 billion won by 2014 to cut the heavy traffic jams on the nation’ s highways by half, the company said recently.

The highway company said it will build byways and crossroads to fix the sections where most of the traffic jams occur around the country. The company selected 51 sections of highway around the country with a total length of 373 km as problem spots to fix.

The company has decided to expand the four lanes of highway north of the Cheonan Interchange to five lanes because the section is heavily jammed every weekend, as well as the side leading to Seoul, which will be fixed by the end of this year, and the section heading to Busan, which will be expanded next year. When the highway sections are expanded, the side heading to Seoul will be sped up by 12 km per hour and the section to Busan by 20 km per hour, the company said.