Strategies for Balancing the Competitiveness between Engineering and Construction in the Korean Infrastructure Industry

In the recent global construction environment, EPC contracts that integrate planning, design, procurement, and construction have been widely used for industrial facilities. Similarly, as the importance of the engineering capability such as project management consulting(PMC) and front end engineering design(FEED) has been increased, design-build contracts also have been gradually adopted for infrastructure projects. Whereas, the Korean infrastructure industry has fragmentary features which mainly emphasize on the construction sector. Therefore, this study aims at developing strategies for enhancing the engineering capability and for balancing the competitiveness between engineering and construction sectors in the Korean infrastructure industry. To this end, the authors first carried out market analysis for both global and domestic market. Then, a structured survey and expert in-depth interviews were sequentially performed in order to reflect practitioners` perspectives and needs for institutional strategies. As a result, five strategies drawn from this study are as follows: 1) rearranging the government`s roles for supporting the engineering sector; 2) establishing institutional bases being compatible with global standards; 3) fostering value-added workforce for undertaking complex tasks; 4) constructing an consortium between an engineering association and general contractors; and 5) building a nationwide collaborative networks for overseas market expansion.