Constructing a Chemical Production Facility in Singapore

German chemical company Evonik embarked on the construc­tion of a new methionine production facility to enhance its global market position in animal nutrition. The new plant is being built on a 42-acre site on Jurong Island, an artificial island off the coast of Singapore. The project is the Essen-based company’s largest single investment so far at €500 million.

The difficult subsoil posed a consid­er­able challenge to the construc­tion project, and Evonik chose CDM Smith for our expertise in geot­ech­ni­cal project support. Apart from soil studies, foundation consulting and construc­tion management on site, we prepared the basic engineering for soil improvement for the loosely deposited, heaped seabed material to safely satisfy the structural require­ments for the new individual building complexes. The detailed engineering stage involved studying the load-bearing and deformation behavior in the building foundations using finite-element analysis on a three-dimensional geot­ech­ni­cal calculation model. The model represents the structural elements playing the main role in load transfer, in addition to the site and foundation structure.

Individual foundation optimization for various building complexes helped significantly cut down the number of piles initially planned, which also helped substantially reduce the costs of the foundation. Evonik involved us early on in this project, as well as for basic engineering in later major projects.