Our comprehensive technology plan, so far, has successfully led the expansion of securing potential technologies from the earlier 66 cases to as many as 231 cases in 2002. This achievement was possible with our enterprise-level support ranging from meeting the demands for a continuous onsite technical development to awarding prizes for exemplary achievements.

However, clients and overseas markets have shifted their focus from technology only to securing both technology and costs in order to enhance the competitiveness of their plants. Within the company, such global trend has aroused our interest in the subject matters such as selection and concentration. In other words, making business choices and making concentrated efforts. Also, dramatic sales increases in the fields of civil engineering and construction have prompted the need to make radical changes in the comprehensive technology plan that was overloading the steel sector.

In November 2002, in our efforts to present a better understanding of such demands, we have unveiled an ambitious plan to implement a technology strategy for the entire business sector with respect to what types of technologies must be developed in order to push our key businesses and key products to become more competitive.

Consequently, after a three-month long process of conducting reviews and making adjustments, the steel-making sector has chosen five fields including blast furnace as their key business focuses. The civil engineering and the environment sectors also have selected three, including building long-span bridges, as their business concentrations, and lastly, the construction sector has picked two, including the super high-rise buildings, as their own. The steel industry has aimed at developing the world's best technologies to join the ranks of Voest Alpine (VAI) of Austria, SMS-DEMAG of Germany and Danieli of Italy, among others. The civil engineering and construction sectors have targeted developing technologies that are comparable to Korea's larger construction corporations.

It spurred the technical development of key businesses that will emerge as the flagship of the future, such as the newly selected FINEX, the pyrolysis and smelting system, remodeling, and the light rail transit. It has additionally adopted the system of Technology Road Map (TRM) for every product of technology in order to implement a plan for enhancing technical competitiveness. The plan would consider the TRM system associated with business strategies, time-series goals of technology, and the investment capacity. The number of candidate technologies to secure reached 312 as of July 2004.

In particular, in order to step up the technical development in the steel sector, POSCO E&C has transferred the Giheung-based plant technology research laboratory team to Pohang in Feb 2003. And, as a result of expanding it to a branch office, we have seen improvements in the business system of cooperation between the business headquarters and the technical research laboratory. It has also revitalized the team's technical exchanges with RIST, which has participated in the actual technical development of the steel sector.

However in July 2003, POSCO's restructuring efforts in its R&D sector have forced the RIST research staff to move en mass to under the POSCO technical research laboratory. They had participated in the company's technical development of the steel sector through the New Technology Research Association. Resulting from this move, the company has been faced with the looming task of having to acquire and develop the technical skills on its own. Since then, we have been making continuous efforts to cultivate specialists in the entire steel sector so that we will be able to attract a steady pool of outstanding research talents.

In addition, POSCO E&C has engaged in a full-scale technical development in the civil engineering and construction sectors. This was the result of our successful entry into the housing project sector and the super high-rise building sector. In part, this was also the result of POSCO E&C's participation in the monumentally grand-scale project, which included new Songdo City, Hwaseong-si Dongtan-myeon, Wonjeon Port, and the light rail transit system for the city of Gimhae.

The super high-rise building sector has formed a liaison with the development projects such as Centum Park and Star City in order to actively promote the specialized development of technologies. Included in these developments are the predictions of the shortening of the vertical structural members, building high strength concrete, the control of wind-induced vibrations, flat-plate casting systems and others. Furthermore, it has developed next-generation futuristic yet environmentally friendly housing that has been applied to both new cities and large scale developmental projects.

In particular, we have proactively addressed the legal confinements placed on POSCO E&C in order to enhance the quality of living conditions, such as the recently emerged issue of maintaining the quality of air inside homes and buildings. In effect, we are continuously stepping up our efforts to pursue potential research and development of construction technologies by introducing equipments for measuring and testing, at the same time securing a pool of professional workforce, and providing an exclusive laboratory unit within Giheung technical research laboratory.