IEven though in the earlier years since its foundation, POSCO E&C had been regarded as just a startup company by other corporations in the same industry home and abroad, our technical history goes far back as early as 3 decades when POSCO had first started building the first facilities for Pohang Works.

During this quite a lengthy period of time, the technologies that had built on the steel work constructions and operations, were still sustaining, growing and shining brightly to make presence onsite, even at the expense of being left unpolished and unfinished under the ambitious plan for an integrated E&C by POSCO E&C.

In our efforts to revitalize the stagnant company through such technical background and R&D restructuring, and in order to support the rapidly expanding size of the business marking the third anniversary of our founding, we have completed the "Comprehensive Technology Plan", an enterprise-level master plan for technology of mid-to-long term.

It was a period in which our domestic engineering sector lacked definitions in terminology, or even in operational scope. In particular, at the time, the steel plant sector almost as good as a wasteland compared to the development and petrochemical plants. Yet, even to this date, the work of comprehensive technology plan, organized and processed from the minds of the POSCO E&C onsite engineers, still remains the primary reference guide in this field.

In October 1997, POSCO E&C has developed a plan to establish our technical strategies, set achievement goals, select and invest in our key businesses based on the experience in building steel works through the comprehensive technology plan.

Specifically, POSCO E&C has devised our target plan in three stages. The first stage involves securing the basic design technology. To do so, we needed to develop our own technology through projects, introduce newly advanced technologies through technology alliances with leading technical companies. At the same time, it required utilizing the R&D network at the pan-POSCO-level including POSCO's technical research laboratory, RIST, POSTEC, and others. The second stage creates the development of specialized technologies. Lastly, in the third stage, the company sets the comparative technical advantages as our goal, defines the scope of the key business sectors and engineering performance in each division so that the technical feats can advance further even more systematically and efficiently than before.

In partnership with POSRI, POSCO E&C has completed the "E&C Technical Capacity Analysis (June-November, 1996)," and after a series of setbacks in a single year alone, it has tapped into 66 cases of potential technologies, registered them as the strategic tasks for enterprise technologies, and has primarily incorporated the required budget into the company budget of developing new technologies.

Given that it is still in the early stages, we have appointed to the director ranks the technical specialists who are responsible for each separate field of technology. We have also broadened and deepened our visions for technological development, and in consideration of the changing management landscape, comprehensive technical plan has since then evolved through the rolling plan each year into our current position as an established cornerstone for enterprise technology.

Since his inauguration in 1998, the Chairman of POSCO E&C Park Deuk-pyo has reaffirmed his commitment to the 2nd year comprehensive technology plan as a "technology-driven" management philosophy. Furthermore, faced with the challenges of adapting quickly to the changing business landscape in the form of the Asian Financial Crisis and restructuring, Chairman Park recognized that the only way to survive in the decline is through enhanced competitiveness. Thus, he has exerted all his efforts to building the company into a technology powerhouse.

As the highlight of the first round rolling plan, the Chairman first selected a dozen core technologies to gain a comparative advantage in technology prowess, then further divided these into core technologies and growth technologies, from which he chose 63 cases. Once the selection was complete, he included the projected direction of his selected technologies in the working plan to pursue it as a headquarter-based project. As for the performance results of the technological development, it was to be reported monthly at the enterprise-level steering meetings.

Also, drafting the technology layouts through in-depth analysis of existing technologies and target technologies has helped the company present some solid technology objectives. POSCO E&C has already published a collection of currently owned technologies by systematically compiling those technologies. The publication is regarded as a building foundation for project applications as well as for the specialization and commercialization of POSCO's core technologies.

In March 1999, POSCO E&C systematically compiled our existing technologies into a 15,000-page long book introducing 94 technologies, thereby laying the groundwork for specialization and commercialization of POSCO E&C's existing technologies. Additionally, it took a step further to publish a separate summary compilation of the existing technologies linked to knowledge-based management, and then distributed them to the entire corporate readership to enhance their usages.

Since then, the publication has expanded its volume to the current size of 241 subjects as of 2004 which was a progressive result of having completed yearly technical developments through the comprehensive technology plan.