• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.97-102
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• 2008

According to the trend of a large-sized vessel and a industrial carrier, the role of the independent contractors such as transport terminal operators, stevedores and warehousemen is increasing the base of cargo distribution that include the function of storage, warehousing, loading, unloading, trimming, dunnaging and lashing. But the common law doctrine of privity of contract has been a perennial source of difficulty for litigants seeking to enforce rights and obligations arising under a bill of lading contract. When carriage contract is negotiated, the concerned parties will be aware that some portion of obligations arising from the contract will be performed by the independent contractors engaged to carry out a particular function. It is reasonable for the independent contractors to be allowed the benefit of the carrier under the contract of carriage. As a part of the alleviating measures for the liability of independent contractors has been allowed various schemes, specially including 'Himalaya Clause'. Therefore, this study performed the validity of 'Himalaya Clause' by means of a recent judicial precedent by the Supreme Court and analyzed the rights of third parties, specially transport terminal operators, under the contract of carriage.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.382-387
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• 2008

Current global construction market has grown at a dramatic expansion rate every year in connection with more market accessibility by foreign contractors. The market openness is largely due to globalization of world construction markets, rapid development of world-wide telecommunication technologies, the formation of collaborative acquisitions and joint ventures among contractors, development of regional Free Trade Blocks, and just name a few. This paper focuses on the formation of collaborative networks when expanding into new foreign markets. The social network analysis (SNA) is introduced to investigate a variety of the collaboration patterns and also their impacts on the performance. To this end, the collaboration cases of 600 international construction projects performed by Korean contractors since 1990 were collected and classified into firm's size, project types, collaboration modes, and performance levels using social network analysis. The results showed a direction in establishing business strategy associated with experienced or inexperienced contractors in international construction projects.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2012.11a
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• pp.279-280
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• 2012

The Construction Standard Production Unit(CSPU) has been used for the standard cost estimate in public and private construction projects. However, It is questionable if the reliability and/or authenticity of the system is acceptable due to the lack of consistent enactment and/or revision procedures. This study identifies informational conditions and issues relative to using daily work report as a data collection method for enacting and/or revising CSPU system, and establishes the measures for improving the daily work report. This study aims on the information constitution of daily job-site report, daily manpower report, wages register for specialty contractors. According to the research results, most of necessary data were included in a daily job-site report. In conclusion, it is investigated that data of daily manpower report and wage register need to be included in a daily job-site report for understanding the current state of worker in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.59-69
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• 2014

In the bidding stage of turn-key based plant construction contracts, owners provide design and performance basis for contractors instead of giving design drawing. To win the bid for a plant construction, the contractors should be obliged to satisfy and ensure owners'requirements such as design and performance basis in a plant construction project, In other words, owners imposes technical risk of the design to the contractors by specifying responsibility for the analysis and verification of the plant construction. Thus, it is very important that contracters make accurate and realistic basic design plan in a short period of time. To deal with such a situation, we propose a systems engineering approach for the analysis and management of the technical risk. Specifically, we first: 1) Analyzes technical risk related with the plant design information for the bidders, followed by 2) Developing stakeholder requirements for the basic engineering design, and 3) System requirements for dealing with technical risk. Also, in this paper, we proposed converting method from MOE(Measure of Effectiveness) to MOP(Measure of Performance) in the risk analysis. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method, we carried out a case study.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.53-58
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• 2008

This paper presents the findings obtained from the investigation of fatal disasters occurred by small-sized construction firms which have been accepted as to provide lower safety performance other than large-sized construction enterprises and cause more than half of the safety accidents in average. The study identifies the current status of safety performance provided by the small-sized construction contractors in details, find the issues involved with lack of safety performance, and suggest the improvement measures derived from the findings. A survey questionnaire was administered to the construction contractors, which are listed in the database of Construction Association of Korea as to fall into rank between 501st and 1000th in construction capacity. Safety issues such as the performance of safety management system, safety control structure, safety cost relative to safety control, education devoted to safety improvement, usage of safety garments or individual protective tools, and activities to maintain safety performance on site, etc were investigated from the study.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.521-525
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• 2011

Although the Korean construction industry has risen rapidly, the quality of the buildings is not met with the industry standard compared to the potential of the technology development and the cost of maintenance has been increased. The user's request for quality have been increased, but in the current building construction, the contractors only follow the specifications of design, material and technology, and their main concern is whether they are in right track with the specification or not. Thus, the necessity of developing technology has been ignored and sufficient opportunities for the development have not been provided as well. In the developed countries, in contrast, the quality assurance and the payment regulation system has been utilized for the active response to the changes of users' request. As a result of this, the maintenance cost has been decreased and the development of construction technology has been improved. Therefore the pay adjustment system is needed to create the improvement of the quality of the buildings by the contractors' earnest building construction. In order to introduce the pay adjustment system suitable to the Korean construction industry, this study presented the logical method of adjusting the construction cost and making payment with the pay adjustment index that is created based on the result of the performance test, after making a set of the indicators of the building performance standard and applied them to the targeted building.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.58
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• pp.215-236
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• 2013

It is quite true that the more Korean contractors receive overseas contracts, the more they need guarantees. The top market for them is the Middle East countries, consisting of more than the half of the total amount awarded last year and the trend is increasing as well. The problem, however, is that employers in these countries are reluctant to use international rules for guarantee such as URDG or ISP98 and easily make unfair callings. However, Korean contractors(applicants), especially small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs) tend to hurriedly enter a contract without looking into its contents as well as guarantees. They do not realize the importance of the guarantees until they receive callings from the employers(beneficiaries). Being independent from the underlying contracts, guarantee is the equivalent to cash in that it usually does not require any proof of demand when calling and the guarantor should make a payment within usually 5 business days after the request. It is often observed these days that several Korean SMEs go bankrupt due to liquidity risks after receiving unfair callings from employers in the Middle East countries. In retrospect, some cases could be obviated if contractors were a little more careful in checking the contents of a guarantee at the time of concluding a contract. For example, there is one case where the underlying contract includes a reduction clause in the Advance Payment bond and the guarantee does not have that clause. In the end, the Korean contractor had to take the whole burden of the bond amount though it had finished 81% of the project. Nobody could argue that contractors should take a full responsibility if they fail in their obligations. However, the employer's wrongful callings need to be prevented in the first place, if possible. As there shouldn't be a case where one party is at a disadvantage against the other like the case mentioned above, useful insight is being sought to minimize unfair calling risks for the benefit of the applicant. First, the applicant should carefully look into every detail of the potential guarantee before signing a contract, heeding especially that there is a reduction clause in the AP bond. Second, the governing principles for guarantee should be the ones that are internally used such as URDG758 that is objective in terms of callings given that, for example, it specifies that the requirement for a supporting statement when making a demand is a default rule. It is also recommended that the form of guarantees be the standard demand guarantee. Third, parties involved in issuing guarantees are advised to understand international rules for guarantee like URDG758 and ISP98 and to play a key role in guiding SME contractors in Korea so that they can protect themselves from possible wrongful callings, particularly from employers in the Middle East countries. I hope this study would give a wake-up call for Korean SMEs wishing to do business in the Middle East countries and remind them of the importance of guarantee itself and its governing principles.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.65-71
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• 2015

This study suggests business strategies by interaction analysis of indicators related construction business and business performance for specialty contractors that provide labor, materials and small sized equipments. To do this research, the data was analyzed for construction orders and business performance indicators of specialty contractors with KRW 7 bil. or more of assets during 1997 through 2010. For specialty contractors that provide labor, materials and smaller sized equipments, the amount of construction orders affects profitability the most and therefore some sort of strategy needs to be established to respond to decrease in operating margin due to dwindling construction orders. In other words, it is determined that increase in the amount of construction orders enhances operation of gross assets as well as the operating margin, ultimately increasing the profitability.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.47
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• pp.129-156
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• 2010

Since the 1970s, international construction employers have commonly requested first demand guarantees upon their contractors as a form of security for due performance of their works. Contractors prefer the greater protection offered by more traditional forms of security requiring presentation of an arbitral award or other evidence of the caller's entitlement to compensation. Many contractors nonetheless feel that they have no alternative but to provide these unconditional guarantees in order to compete. However, these unconditional first demand guarantees are controversial and have given rise to numerous disputes both in arbitration and litigation. Disputes arising from first demand guarantees can be broken down into a) applications to prevent a perceived fraudulent or otherwise unfair or improper calling of a guarantee, b) claims arising from such abusive calls and c) claims relating to the consequences of such calls even if the call itself may not be abusive as such. The contractors should carefully assess the risk of an abusive call being made bearing in mind the difficulties he may face in seeking to prevent such a call. He should also bear in mind the difficulties, delays and cost he is likely to encounter in seeking to recover any monies wrongfully called. One option would be to provide that the call can only be made once and to the extent that the employer's damages have been assessed or even incurred or even for the default to have been established by an arbitral tribunal or court. Another option would be to provide that any call be accompanied by a decision of a competent and impartial third party stating that the contractor is in breach. For example, such a requirement could be incorporated into a construction contract based on the FIDIC Conditions by submitting this decision to a Dispute Adjudication Board. Another option would be to provide for the "ICC Counter-Guarantee Scheme". In sum, there would appear to be room for compromise between the employer and the contractor in respect of first demand guarantees by conditioning the entitlement to call such guarantees to the determination of a competent and impartial third party.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.16-27
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• 2022

This study analyzed both the legal system regarding fair trade and the types of unfair trade in the construction industry. Then, it derived the factors with which to evaluate the level of fairness. These factors were classified by each type of participant in the construction industry, such as general contractors and subcontractors, and each construction stage, such as bidding, contracting, and construction. The perceived fairness level of factors was analyzed using a survey of 238 employees of general contractors and subcontractors. Next, the study developed a fairness index for the construction industry. The index showed that subcontractors perceived the level of fairness more negatively than general contractors, but both perceived the construction stage of the industry as having the lowest level of fairness. General contractors perceived the bidding and contracting stages as having the highest fairness levels, and subcontractors perceived the contracting stage as having the highest level of fairness. The developed fairness index identified the evaluation factors that need improvement and the fairness level perceived by each type of participant at each stage of construction. The results of this study can contribute to establishing measures that improve the level of fairness in the construction industry.