An MDB business competency assessment of Korean construction companies

Korean construction companies garnered 59.1 billion dollars in overseas construction orders in 2011, making 2011 the second year in which Korea exceeded the 50 billion dollars in orders mark. In order to continue this upward trend, more Korean construction companies should enter overseas construction markets. Based on this increasing necessity, this research identified competencies required by companies that wish to secure entry into multilateral development bank markets which part of overseas construction markets. In order to understand the competencies required for winning orders through multilateral development bank markets, 36 competency items were identified by focus group discussions with experts and extensive literature review on multilateral development bank business. Moreover, the competency levels of existing construction companies were compared to multilateral development bank competencies and then were analyzed by applying importance performance analysis and GAP analysis of the data collected from the expert survey. This study revealed that Korean companies are good at the areas of construction schedule management, project management, and engineering/technical capabilities. However, the ability to prepare bidding documents in English, the compatibility with multilateral development bank's support strategies by country, and the ability to handle risks of the local country were identified to be the key competencies that need to be urgently improved.