Turner, which was founded in 1902, has positioned itself favorably in specialized segments of the building construction market and holds the position of market leader in the construction of office buildings and sports facilities as well as educational and healthcare facilities. The HOCHTIEF subsidiary also numbers among the most sought-after providers of construction management services for airport, hotel, data center and pharmaceutical facility building projects. In addition, the company has secured the top position in the USA in the growing green building market focusing on sustainable and environmentally friendly construction. In contrast, Turner has practically not operated in the single family residential construction market and therefore has not been affected by the collapse of this segment.
For years now, our strategy in the US building construction market has been to focus on stable market segments. Despite the potential for a weakening of the US building construction market as a whole, market research institute McGraw-Hill Construction forecasts continued strength in the educational and healthcare facilities segments. Turner is extremely selective in the pursuit of work. The priorities here are high-quality earnings and adequate distribution of risk. The high order backlog ensures that our capacity will be fully utilized in 2008 and 2009 according to calculations. At this time, Turner is already securing projects for 2010 and beyond.
Turner has earned an excellent reputation on the US market. The company acts as a construction manager, initially supporting its clients in designing and costing their projects. During construction, Turner manages the subcontractors. Clients value the quality and reliability of the company"s work – the large number of high-caliber repeat clients is evidence of this. Key accounts include universities along with hospitals, corporate and public clients. Open and trust-based cooperation is a major reason for Turner"s success.
Flatiron is one of the top ten companies in the bridge, road and rail transit segments. The company therefore operates
The acquisition of Flatiron enabled us to round out the services offered by our Group in North America; we can now successfully serve both the building and civil construction markets. In particular, the cooperation between our two US subsidiaries holds substantial synergy potential. The first joint contract was landed in summer 2008. The companies will jointly handle the expansion of Sacramento International Airport with a completion target of 2012.
Additional synergy opportunities are offered by the publicprivate partnership (PPP) segment. Flatiron has already gained experience in the design and construction of various PPP projects in Canada. We have combined this expertise with our PPP experience from Germany. We have thus become a competent partner in this still young US market. This is also true in the case of building construction, where we work with Turner to participate in invitations to tender. Here, we benefit from the company's extensive network of offices across the USA and its excellent positioning in local markets. In early 2008, we formed HOCHTIEF PPP Solutions North America, a company specializing in the building construction and transportation infrastructure segments. Currently, we are participating in several tender processes and have already prequalified for our first toll road project in the USA. The attractive North American PPP market is expected to generate high rates of growth. We anticipate that in the next two years projects valued at USD 100 billion will be privately financed in the USA alone. The public building construction sector will grow at a slower pace, and the greatest potential here is in educational, healthcare and administrative facilities projects.
On the US market, we will continue to pursue our strategy of providing an optimal range of services to profitable segments of the building construction and civil engineering markets and focusing on partnerships with our clients. We are also making sure that we will be positioned early on to enter newly developing markets and are contributing our existing skills and experience to this effort. Our international expertise is enabling us to gain a firm foothold in the PPP market in particular. In the future, we continue to expect very strong performance from our US business based on our excellent positioning and the efficient operations of our subsidiaries.