Daewoo E&C wins highway project in Qatar

An artist’s impression shows the E-Ring road to be built by Daewoo Engineering & Construction in Qatar. The $730 million project requires high technology and expertise. / Courtesy of Daewoo E&C

By Yoon Ja-young

Daewoo Engineering and Construction (Daewoo E&C) has won an 805.1 billion won ($730 million) highway construction project in Qatar.

The company announced Sunday that it received an “awarding letter” from Qatar’s public works authority for the project.

It will expand an existing highway to the south of the country’s capital, Doha, by 4.5 kilometers, on top of building a 4-kilometer road comprising of between eight and 14 lanes and multi-level interchanges.

Roads in the Middle East usually have roundabouts installed, but these are inefficient on large highways comprising over eight lanes as it creates a bottle neck and increases the risk of car accidents.

The multi-level interchanges are designed to avoid such negative consequences. However, this means the project requires high technology and expertise, which prompted the Qatar authority to thoroughly examine the bidders’ capabilities.

It eventually selected Daewoo as the sole winner of the project, which is scheduled to take 42 months to complete.

“In the New Orbital Highway where construction is ongoing, the section constructed by Daewoo E&C is currently the only one meeting the schedule. They seem to have highly evaluated our capability for that,” a spokesman of Daewoo E&C explained.

Daewoo E&C expects that the project will give the company the upper hand to win other infrastructure construction projects in the country which is scheduled to host the World Cup in 2022. The country is already pushing various infrastructure projects including roads and railways ahead of the international football event. The construction of the E-Ring near Doha airport and its World Cup stadium is one of a few core projects to improve traffic conditions, for which the authorities in Doha is stressing speedy completion.

“Amid the sluggish construction market overseas due to low oil prices, we’ve been focusing on diversifying our portfolio through infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges. The efforts have paid off with a highway in Ethiopia, a bridge in India and now the Qatar project,” the spokesman said. “We expect to win more such quality orders overseas in the latter part of the year as well,” he added.

The overseas construction orders won by Korean companies stood at $18.5 billion so far this year, down 46 percent from the previous year. While other Middle Eastern countries are cancelling or delaying construction orders due to fiscal shortages amid low oil prices, Qatar is actively bolstering its infrastructure.