The Taipei City Government has approved the resumption of construction on Taipei 101 -- formerly known as the Taipei Financial Center -- over three months after a powerful earthquake detached two tower cranes from their mounts, causing them to hurtle to the ground killing five people.
The Bureau of Labor Affairs and the Public Works Department of the city government issued the notice, permitting full resumption of construction on all floors on June 28 and July 3, respectively.
PHOTO: TAIPEI 101
Permission to resume building on floors from B5 to 23 was granted on May 15, although building restrictions have reportedly cost the company NT$800 million, which are expenses related to workers' wages, insurance premiums and other costs associated with keeping the project going. The figure does not include the cost of reparing the damage caused by the quake.
Construction was halted on March 31 when the earthquake, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, sent the two cranes perched on the 56th floor plummeting to earth.
According to Terry Shen (沈雲飛), vice president of the tower's builder -- the Taipei Financial Center Corp (台北金融大樓公司) -- two new cranes are being built in a joint venture between Japan's Nippon Steel and Taiwan's China Steel Corp (中鋼).
The new cranes, which will replace toppled cranes No. 2 and No. 4, will have specially reinforced masts that will be able to withstand strong quakes like the one on March 31, Shen said.
Shen said that the new cranes will have special pin-strengthened masts which are the same as those used in cranes in No. 1 and No. 3 -- which stayed in position during the earthquake.
"The pin-system is much stronger, as was seen during the quake when the other cranes didn't fall," Shen said.
The differences between the four cranes don't stop there. Cranes No. 1 and No. 3 were virtually custom-made for use on the project, while cranes No. 2 and No. 4 had already been used previously in Hong Kong, Shen said.
"The parts and elements are expected to arrive in mid-August and installation will begin in September. There will therefore be no significant progress on the steel structure above the 56th floor until September," according to a company statement.
The city government is currently examining reports submitted by Taipei Financial's main contractor, KTRT, on what caused the crane masts to fail during the temblor. KTRT is formed by Kumagai Gumi, Taiwan Kumagai, RSEA Engineering Corporation (
The report also includes a study of the accident and the safety of the building structure by the Taipei Structural Engineers Association and of tower crane enhancement, conducted by National Taiwan University's Center of Earthquake Engineering Research (CEER).
No decision has been made on whether professional misconduct or criminal negligence were factors in the tragedy.
Taipei 101 is scheduled for completion by 2004.
The biggest single shareholder in what is to be world's tallest building is China United Trust & Investment Corp (中聯信託) -- which has a 20 percent stake. The next leading shareholder is the China Development Industrial Bank (中華開發銀行). The most important anchor tenant of the facility will be the Taiwan Stock Exchange (證交所), which will occupy about seven floors in the building, or about 6,000 pings.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to