Daewoo E&C connects world with advanced bridge engineering

Daewoo Engineering & Construction is extending its decades-long bridge portfolio by completing projects in some of the world's most populated and isolated regions, with an ongoing one currently crossing over the Ganges River in India, according to Korea's major construction company, Sunday.

Starting the infrastructure construction in 1984, Daewoo E&C, under a joint venture with India's No. 1 construction company Larsen & Toubro, is now working on the $480 million Bihar New Ganga Bridge Project. Daewoo holds a 50 percent stake.

The project is an addition to six bridges over the river spanning 445 kilometers, a number short of resolving traffic bottlenecks along the riverside regions, which has also contributed to creating social inequity across regions divided by the body of water. Scheduled for completion next year, the project will connect northern and southern Patna regions in Bihar Province.

With six lanes both ways, 65 pylons and a total extension distance of 19.7 kilometers, the bridge, according to Daewoo E&C, has the world's longest extradosed bridge section of 9.76 kilometers.

Daewoo E&C won the bid for the project against two Chinese companies in 2016 after its design for the project impressed the orderer. It was the company's first project in India in 16 years following its series of previous projects there that amounted to $2.3 billion, including an automobile assembly plant in 1995, a coal-fired power plant in 1996, an electronics manufacturing plant in 1997 and a hydropower plant in 2000.

"We'll complete the Bihar bridge project without defects just as we've done in our numerous bridge construction projects in the past," a Daewoo E&C official said. In 2022, the company's President Baek Jung-wan announced the company's new vision "Your Dream, Our Space," defining its bridges as "more than construction which creates new environment and space."

The Bihar project is preceded by another Daewoo E&C project, the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link, a 21.8-kilometer-long ocean bridge connecting the old and new urban districts in the city with a population of over 12.5 million. With India's biggest conglomerate Tata Group, the company completed the project in January. During 69 months of construction, the company saw zero workplace accidents and used eco-friendly technologies to minimize environmental damage to local mangrove forests that are protected by UNESCO.

Daewoo E&C also completed Kazungula Bridge, an extradosed-type running 923 meters, in Africa in 2020 after exclusively winning the project bid in 2014. Situated in the border regions of Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe, the bridge resolved serious bottleneck problems for freight transportation that had to rely on barges to cross the Zambezi River, which forced them to wait for days.

"The African countries gritted teeth for 40 years to see the problem resolved," a company official said. "The project, beating tenders by companies in China and Japan, reduced river crossing time to two hours from a week, earning recognition for having improved traffic and logistic environments in southern African regions."