HanmiGlobal releases e-book on its history

The cover page of HanmiGlobal’s digital history book shows one of the company’s previous projects, the Sangam World Cup Stadium. / Courtesy of HanmiGlobal

By Jhoo Dong-chan

HanmiGlobal has published an e-book on the construction management (CM) company’s history to mark the 20th anniversary of its founding, the company said Tuesday.

According to a company official, HanmiGlobal’s e-book will tackle many topics, including how it introduced the new concept of CM to Korea in 1996, survived the IMF crisis and then became the nation’s top CM company.

“HanmiGlobal’s 20-year history is a history of the nation’s CM service,” said a company official.

“The concept of CM was introduced to Korea in 1996 following a series of manmade tragic accidents ― the collapses of Seongsu Bridge in 1994 and Sampoong Department Store in 1995. Both disasters, the results of faulty design and shoddy construction, caused great human suffering and death. The errors riddling both projects could have been avoided with third-party supervision and post-construction management.”

In a bid to prevent such manmade disasters from recurring, Kim Jong-hoon established HanmiGlobal in 1996 as the nation's first CM company. HanmiGlobal has since taken a leading role in the industry, building its global influence.

HanmiGlobal’s history e-book is divided into four pages each tackling different topics.

The first page illustrates the crisis in Korea’s construction market after the tragic collapses, and how HanmiGlobal was introduced in 1996.

The second page portrays how the company introduced the world’s leading CM technologies here and brought innovation to Korea’s construction market.

The third page explains how it suggested “values” in each construction project and developed into a global CM company.

The fourth page shows the company’s challenges and plans to become one of the world’s top 10 CM service providers.

Cho Dong-sung, a strategy professor of Seoul National University, coined the term “loc-balization” for the company’s global strategy, praising its innovation in assimilating global leader Parsons’ CM technology for local construction companies.

An official said HanmiGlobal will fully provide the e-book for education and press circles along with investors to spread understanding of the nation’s CM market. The e-book can be downloaded for free at its main website, www.hanmiglobal.com.

“HanmiGlobal’s challenges and innovations for the last 20 years have been the foundation of the nation’s CM industry,” said HanmiGlobal Chairman Kim Jong-hoon.

“I hope the e-book contributes to not only Korea’s construction market but also other industries to help companies develop as global leaders.”

So far, HanmiGlobal has worked on more than 1,800 projects at home and abroad, including 245 projects in 50 different countries.