Vice Chairman Chung Jin-haeng of Hyundai E&C (Photos: Hyundai E&C)

Hyundai E&C snagged a huge construction project involving the construction of an underground tunnel under the Han River between Gimpo and Paju, the second sector of the Gimpo-Paju Expressway, whose total cost is worth some 561.5 billion won, the company said.

The highway is some 25.36 km long, a part of the No. 2 Circular Highway around the Capital Area. The tunnel to be dug under the riverbed is some 2,900 meters long and the project also includes the construction of a 70-meters long bridge targeted for completion in January, 2026, the company said.

Officials of the company said they will use Shield TBM Construction Technology in building the tunnel, which is less noisy as no explosives will be used to bore the river bed and thus safe with every machine controlled by computers, an excellent method to dig tunnels. The construction company won the project as part of a consortium with a number of other construction firms including Dongbu E&C, Hanshin E&C and Kyeryong E&C and Hoban E&C.

The company will use the same technology as its other construction projects, including the Daekok-Sosan Railroad, the double-tract line and the MRT East Line T308 in Singapore.

The company also relied on the Shield TBM Technology to complete a number of construction projects both at home and abroad the Jinhae-Geoje pipeline Project, the Souther Singapore Electric District NS3 Project, the Yulchon II Multimple Thermal Power Plant completed in 2014, and the Singapore MRT6C931 Project completed in 2016, among the 11 projects both at home and overseas that were completed using the Shield TBM Technology.

“We plan to continuously rely on our own superb construction technologies and workmanship to clinch new orders in the days ahead leading the construction market with our own work quality and technology prowess,” officials said.

The Shield method is a mechanical underground tunnel excavation method. The type of Shield TBM is selected and manufactured according to the cross section and geological features, and then the equipment is installed in the vertical aperture underground location to be excavated.

The outside of Shield TBM is made of a rigid steel container called Skin Plate (Shield) and consists of front, center and rear.
The propulsion method is to rotate the cutting wheel for digging while maintaining the earth pressure in the chamber to improve the fluidity and then, the propulsion jack of Shield TBM is used for propulsion while supporting the segment with reaction force after constructing the first lining while assembling and installing the segment and the tunnel is completed by repeating it continuously.

Hyundai E&C went overseas for construction projects in 1966, undertaking the construction of the Pattani-Narathiwat Highway in Thailand. The company had won the competition with some 30 foreign construction firms, Other overseas construction projects that cannot be left out of the company’s history include the South Par 4 and 5 Stage Projects, which were worth $1.6 billion to be counted as the largest single project that the company undertook overseas, next to the Jubail Industrial Harbor Project in Saudi Arabia that the company worked on 1976.

The company became an affiliate of the Hyundai Motor Group in April 2011 and its total overseas projects amounted to $10 billion, putting the accumulated overseas projects to be worth around $100 billion in 2013.

“We expanded our business overseas in the 1970s, and are internationally recognized thanks to our gas and oil petrochemical refinery construction work with Yanbu NGL Sea Terminal in Saudi Arabia, a natural gas refinery in Malaysia, the South Pars gas treatment facility in Iran, the Qatar fertilizer plant (stage 5 & 6) and other projects.”