GD Copper USA Inc.

GD Copper (Golden Dragon Copper) is a Chinese-owned, 500,000-square-foot precision copper tubing manufacturing facility. With good leadership from our field team, Hoar turned language barriers and cultural differences between the Chinese representatives and our construction team into opportunities to learn and connect.

Chinese and American cultural differences were apparent from the start and presented unique challenges for the contracting team. In Hoar Construction’s traditional pledge to “understand our clients,” we engaged in extensive Chinese culture research, training, and group discussion which helped immensely in the management and administration of the project. The owner required that Hoar go to construction contract on documents that were only 50% complete. This made it necessary to have a firm and complete understanding of the finished product so our budget would reflect a fully designed facility. In addition, the owner required that construction begin before the design was complete.

To be able to do that and deliver the project successfully, Hoar realized that we would have to self-perform the critical activities of the schedule – the 21,500 cubic yards of concrete foundations. Recognizing the foundations would be a key to the project’s success, we sequenced the work so the steel building shell would be installed first. It would provide weather protection as the foundations were installed. As we worked with the Chinese team, we also learned that bridging the culture gap is not as daunting as it may at first seem. When the owner’s senior advisor mentioned he had always had a garden to tend in China, our team cleared an area out of the way of the work, tilled it, and covered it with topsoil so he could have a garden to replace the one he left behind. We also dug the stormwater retention pond four feet deeper than designed to hold enough rainwater that it could be stocked with fish which the Chinese reps would sometimes catch for their lunch.