Regional Report: Pace-setting Asia

The Asia Pacific region has long been one of the most attractive and dynamic construction markets in the world, with high growth, large individual economies and no shortage of ambition when it comes to planning infrastructure and buildings.

As Scott Hazelton writes in this month’s Economic Outlook, there are a few bumps in the road this year, with global investment moving away from emerging regions like Asia-Pacific, back to the US as yields there improve. In addition, there are the perennial issues of the pace of public sector reform – a common theme for many emerging markets around the world – and disruption form political events, be they expected, like the elections in India and Indonesia, or more serious, like the military coup in Thailand.

But the outlook for the region is still fairly bright. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) GDP growth among developing Asian nations will be +6.7% this year, up from +6.5% last year. This is well above growth rates of other regions of the world. The nearest rival is sub-Saharan Africa with its projected +5.4% economic growth this year, and the world average is put at +3.6%.

One of the key institutions in the region as far as the construction sector is concerned is the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which financed more than US$ 21 billion of construction projects in the last year.

Although this is not much in the context of total construction output, which runs into trillions of Dollars per year across Asia, the key point about the ADB and other development banks is that they get involved in the larger projects that otherwise might not get off the ground. Last year they included two electricity generation projects in Pakistan worth more than US$ 1 billion, for example.

However, the ADB says the region is falling short of what it should be spending to meet development goals. It says the infrastructure segment alone needs investment of US$ 800 billion per year to 2020 to drive economic growth by providing access to markets, making cities cleaner and easier to navigate, and creating jobs.

Michael Barrow, the ADB’s deputy director general in its private sector operations department said, “The infrastructure deficit in Asia is so enormous that we can’t expect either private investors or the public sector to take on the challenge alone. We need collaboration between private and public placers to make things work.”

According to the ADB, part of the solution to developing more public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the region lies in getting the right laws and regulations in place. However, projects can still fail if they are not developed in a professional manner, it said.

Key projects

Infrastructure is a catch-all word that covers roads, railways, ports, water & sewerage, energy and communications networks, and even housing by some definitions, so it is difficult to generalise about it.

However, one common theme in Asia Pacific is the prevalence of tunnelling schemes. These feature in many difference types of infrastructure projects – particularly transportation and water – and often provide a solution where surface construction would not be viable in Asia’s large and densely populated cities.

For example, this year has seen three 5.23 m diameter Robbins Main Beam tunnel boring machines (TBMs) complete excavation of the Pahang Selangor Raw Water Tunnel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which at 44.6 km long is the longest tunnel in Southeast Asia. This challenging project passes through the Titiwangsa mountain range under cover as high as 1,246 m and below geothermal features including hot springs, and is designed to provide the city with enough fresh water for projected future demand.

The SNUI contracting consortium comprising Japan’s Shimizu Corporation and Nishimatsu Construction Corporation (NCC), along with local companies UEM Builders and IJM also had to contend with boring through hard granite and multiple fault zones, which informed the decision to use three TBMs on separate drives.

According to Robbins, the machines maintained excellent advance rates despite the fault zones, variable rock conditions, high rock temperatures, and frequent electrical storms that required machine stoppage. Due to the hot springs, water ingress at temperatures up to 56° C was recorded. Maximum advance rates of 49 m in one day, 198 m in one week, and 657 m in one month were nonetheless achieved.

Meanwhile in China, Herrenknecht signed an order in April to supply two TBMs to contractor Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co., Ltd. (STEC) for further expansion of the Wuhan metro system. This is part of the project to add four lines to the existing three-line network by 2017 taking its total length to 215 km.

The two 15.8 m diameter Mixshield TBMs will cross 39.5 m under the surface of the Yangtze River to create a 2.59 km long twin-bore double-deck tunnel. There will be a three-lane road on the upper deck, with metro line 7 below.

Inter-city rail schemes are also significant in the region, thanks largely to the Chinese government’s heavy focus on high-speed rail schemes. One such project is the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL) project in Southern China, where the new terminal building in Kowloon alone is budgeted to cost HK$ 9 billion (US$ 1.16 billion).

The contractor for the West Kowloon Terminus Station (North) is a joint venture between Leighton and Gammon, which is using RMD Kwikform formwork and shoring equipment for one of the most challenging aspects of the build, the Terminus’s iconic entrance building, which consists of a dramatic roof structure made up of three steel trusses, a huge sloping concrete beam and a concrete arch.

The concrete beam – known as P1 on the project, consists of six unique 4 m deep, sloping, cantilevered beams and eight bespoke ‘dragon’ shaped concrete sections spanning between each beam. At three locations along the length of the beam there are huge cast-in situ elements where the steel roof connects. The tight tolerances meant the design of the formwork and shoring had to be precisely engineered.

Rory O’Gara, senior project engineer for RMD Kwikform in Hong Kong said, “It was apparent that we would need to use a combination of heavy duty, birdcage, proprietary and special items for this challenge.

RMD Kwikform designed a 17 m high heavy-duty working platform consisting of 600 tonnes of Megashor shoring, supporting bespoke and proprietary beams, made by RMD Kwikform. A tension-only bracing system built to Hong Kong wind codes also had to be incorporated into the solution. The platforms were designed to be pre-fabricated into 5.4 m high units, significantly reducing the need for working at height and giving safe operative access from the foundation level to within 3 m of the cantilever beam.”

Discussing the Eastern Arch aspect of the construction, Adrian Clamp, construction director of the Leighton-Gammon JV said, “The Eastern Arch is another highly complex aspect of this project, where working closely with the RMD Kwikform engineers proved highly beneficial. It is a three-box culvert structure with its wall heights changing continuously. The base slope is also changing constantly across two planes and the base slab depth, wall thickness and top slab depth also change at regular intervals along its length. As part of the design we also needed the arch to be supported at three points by ‘K’ shaped circular columns that we needed RMD Kwikform to specially fabricate.”

The design of the Eastern Arch was made increasingly complex by the necessity to meet other project demands and maintain access routes around the site. This made the construction sequence unconventional as the arch will remain three quarters complete for over a year, meaning the shoring needs to remain in place.

Mr Clamp added, “As one of the biggest construction projects ever undertaken in Hong Kong, this was always going to provide a number of interesting challenges. Working closely with RMD Kwikform engineers on several key aspects of the entrance building has helped us remain on schedule, to meet the tight construction deadlines.”

This all goes to show that while the Asian construction market could arguably be more active, there is no shortage of major projects in the region.