THE KOREA HERALD – GS Engineering and Construction (GS E&C) announced yesterday that it has completed construction of the Singapore Rail Test Center in the western region of Singapore, five years after the Korean builder won the contract to construct the first such facility in Southeast Asia.
At a completion ceremony held on Friday, attended by officials from Singapore’s Land Transport Authority and GS E&C, the company highlighted how the centre brings together Singapore’s diverse urban rail systems into a single facility capable of testing durability, performance, compatibility and top speeds.
The centre will play a key role in identifying and addressing potential issues by testing and inspecting new trains before they are deployed on Singapore’s rail lines.
Built on a 540,000-square-metre site, the facility features three test tracks totaling 16.9 kilometres, along with 10 buildings, including a central control center and a general administration building.
While the centre is the 10th of its kind globally, it is the first in Southeast Asia. GS E&C, in consortium with the Korea Railroad Research Institute, secured the project from the LTA in 2020 for approximately USD373 million. When building the facility, GS E&C employed a range of advanced construction technologies to ensure both high-quality results and efficiency.
The company used the precast concrete method, which involves manufacturing concrete structures off-site and assembling them on-site, to enhance precision and quality.
It also adopted Building Information Modeling to identify and address potential risks through 3D simulations. According to the company, these efforts contributed to 14 million accident-free work hours, with the project completed on time and to high-quality standards.
“The successful completion of this complex project has proven our technical capacity as a global rail infrastructure builder,” a company official said.
“We will continue to promote the status of Korean construction firms in overseas markets based on the expertise we’ve demonstrated in Singapore.”
