Building Prestige Abroad
20-09-2012
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The corporation’s board chairman Le Viet Hai started the story about the development of Hoa Binh with the first project in 1992. At the time, when winning the first contract to build the Riverside Hotel on Ton Duc Thang Street in downtown HCMC, the company had a few experienced engineers and workers who were working in poor conditions. Now, manned by some 12,000 people, Hoa Binh has been working on hundreds of construction projects on various scales nationwide. Hoa Binh will implement contracts worth a combined VND6 trillion from now to 2014, including some VND3.9 trillion to be disbursed this year.
Winning a large amount of orders, Hoa Binh is possibly one of a few domestic contractors that have been doing good business in a market where many real estate projects have ground to a halt due to the economic slowdown.
The heyday of the real estate sector in 2007 brought a lot of benefits to realty companies and contractors. Hai says that was the time when all the stakeholders felt happy thanks to snowballing foreign investment into Vietnam. In particular, after listing shares on the Hochiminh Stock Exchange, Hoa Binh, coded HBC, attracted huge interest and investment opportunities. As a result, the company expanded business operations to the real estate sector by investing in 15 projects.
“At the time Hoa Binh joined in many segments of the realty sector,” Hai says, adding that the company had feasible and efficacious plans to invest into potential projects. However, one year after, the market turned sour after a period of overheated growth.
Seeing the bad signs, Hoa Binh timely took action by partially selling its projects. In 2009, the company successfully sold its biggest project. “If we had not fixed the fault in time, we would have deadlocked in the realty industry,” Hai says. Hoa Binh now has six potential projects that are also ready for sale. Talking about coming back to its core business, Hai says, “We must know our real capacities. We must develop in a controllable way to prevent market risks.”
Going abroad
Hai says that thanks to cooperation with some international contractors like Taisei, Kajima and Toa Corp. (Japan), Kumho, Posco, Hyundai, Daewon and Doosan (Korea), Bauer (Germany) and Bouyques (France), Hoa Binh has gained extensive experience in big construction projects. Moreover, Hoa Binh has completed building the comprehensive management standards from corporate human resources like ERP, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 to construction qualification Conquas and construction information management in line with international standards. “Enrst & Young has helped Hoa Binh build the financial code and administrative system winning international standards,” Hai says. The company now is home to domestic talents and experienced experts from Japan and Korea who are ready to face challenges.
The maturity in the domestic market, advanced technology and increasing management capacities have encouraged Hoa Binh to go abroad. Last year, it cooperated with UOA Group of Malaysia to build Le Yuan residential area with 670 apartments and an artificial beach in Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian partner plans to transfer the construction of Desa 2 luxury building project with 1,300 apartments to Hoa Binh. In July this year Hai made a trip to Myanmar to explore market potentials. He and three French partners will come back to Myanmar this month to thrash out action plans. In addition, Hoa Binh is exploring opportunities in construction in the Lao market via a memorandum of understanding with BIM Group to build the five-star Crown Plaza Hotel. Cambodia is another destination that is offering investment opportunities. Hoa Binh will need to seek 300 people for these potential overseas works.
Hai says expanding business abroad has helped Hoa Binh access the world of international construction and gain advanced technology. Moreover, this move is a step toward proving that domestic contractors also have the capacity to execute big projects in foreign countries.
