Go to an electronics store today and you might drive home with a Samsung TV or phone. But in a few years, you might drive home on a Samsung road and across a Samsung bridge.

The South Korean conglomerate, which makes everything from tablet computers to oil tankers, plans to break into the American engineering and construction market, going up against big players such as Aecom Technology Corp. and Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. And like those firms, it’s made Southern California the headquarters for its new engineering division. Samsung Construction & Trading, part of Seoul, South Korea’s Samsung Group, opened the headquarters of its Engineering & Construction Americas practice in Long Beach last year. The group plans to bid on massive infrastructure projects – roadways, bridges and power plants costing $1 billion or more – in Canada, South and Central America and especially in the United States.

Ken Fredrickson, president and managing director of the new venture, said Samsung and other Korean firms are more upbeat about the U.S. economy than are their American counterparts.

“Go to Seoul and the feeling is much different,” Fredrickson said. “We see a positive U.S. market. There’s tremendous opportunity here.”

Part of that opportunity, Fredrickson said, is that there’s strong demand for big infrastructure projects in the United States and the rest of the Americas, whereas demand has cooled in Korea.

But Samsung also sees opportunity in the ongoing budget challenges faced by state and local governments and in the likelihood that the federal government will be spending less money in the years ahead. That’s because Samsung’s plan for the Americas includes targeting the growing market for privately financed public-works projects, commonly called public-private partnerships, which allow governments to get the infrastructure they need without taking on bond debt. Fredrickson said Samsung is in a good position to leverage its massive balance sheet – the Samsung Group reported assets of $344 billion last year – to pay for projects as well as build them.

“We have a construction world based on federal dollars being there, but that’s going to change,” he said. “And we’re cash-rich right now.”

But even for Samsung, breaking into the U.S. engineering and construction market could prove difficult. It will have to face off against firms that not only have decades of experience and relationships with local, state and federal leaders, but that in some cases have started targeting the same kinds of public-private projects Samsung hopes to build.

Public support?

What’s more, Samsung could be at a disadvantage because of its foreign ownership, said Chase Jacobson, an analyst for William Blair & Co. in New York who follows Aecom and other large engineering and construction firms.

“This is such a relationship-based business,” Jacobson said. “Any big project, you have to get a lot of public support. In today’s world, you don’t want to be that person in the public domain creating jobs for a foreign firm.”

Samsung Construction & Trading has always worked mostly in Korea, though it also has completed high-profile projects across Asia and the Middle East. It was the primary contractor on the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

But a few years ago, the company refocused on international markets, with the goal of doing 70 percent of its work outside of Korea. The shift is a matter of necessity: Korea’s rapid economic growth over the past half century combined with its relatively small size mean the country is essentially built out.

“The bulk of the country’s infrastructure was built in the ’70s,” Fredrickson said. “There’s not a lot of rebuilding required yet. Unless you start looking outside, you don’t have a market anymore.”

Samsung started its Engineering & Construction Americas practice in 2010, initially running it out of an office in La Mirada. Last year, Samsung hired Fredrickson, who formerly worked for San Francisco’s URS Corp. and Pasadena’s Jacobs, and moved to a downtown Long Beach office building. It now has 74 employees in Long Beach and another 60 at an office in Austin, Texas.

So far, the Americas practice has been focused on supporting Samsung engineering and construction projects outside the United States, including work in Singapore and India. The division also works on the company’s own properties in the United States, such as a chip manufacturing plant in Austin. But now Fredrickson said the firm is starting to chase outside projects in the Americas, although he could not disclose projects the company might bid on.

Speaking generally, Fredrickson said Samsung will seek to build power plants, highways, bridges and other big public works projects, especially ones that Samsung can help finance through public-private partnerships.

In such a partnership, private capital is used to build a project, with investors being paid back either in fees or tolls collected – as in the case of a toll road or bridge – or in lease payments made by a public agency.

Public-private projects can save governments some money. The projects can be built faster and often cheaper than public projects because there’s less red tape. Also, governments can save because they may be protected from cost overruns and they may be relieved of long-term maintenance obligations.

Beyond that, such projects typically keep the debt off the books of public agencies.

Samsung likely wouldn’t finance an entire project by itself, but rather invest some of its own capital and then seek other investors. That’s not a novel approach, but Joanna Oliva, vice president of structured finance and investment for Samsung’s Americas construction practice, said the company has more direct access to capital than other engineering and construction firms.

“We could go and arrange a front that would include investors that are interested in working with us,” Oliva said. “But the benefit of the Samsung Group is our size allows us to have a conversation within our group before we go outside.”

Raising cash

But as Samsung seeks to tap the public-private partnership market, other firms see the same opportunity and are doing likewise. This month, Los Angeles engineering giant Aecom announced the creation of Aecom Capital, a subsidiary that will raise money for public-private partnerships.

“There’s great demand for infrastructure, a poor supply of money on the public side and significant supply of private-sector money,” said Michael Burke, president of Aecom. “Today, we do the design and build. Now, with Aecom Capital, we can bring the financing and bring a total solution.”

Aecom already owns a 30 percent stake in Meridiam Infrastructure, a Paris firm that raises money and invests in public-private partnerships. Meridiam organized private financing for the $490 million George Deukmejian Courthouse, which is under construction in Long Beach. The company will essentially lease the courthouse to the state court system for the next 35 years to repay investors.

Burke said Aecom will continue to work with Meridiam and maintain its stake in that company. Each company will have a different focus: Meridiam will specialize in transportation infrastructure projects of $1 billion or more, while Aecom Capital will help pay for projects in the $200 million to $500 million range.

And it will likely focus more on what Burke calls social infrastructure: courthouses, jails and other public buildings.

Aecom is a global firm, but Burke said Aecom Capital will focus on the United States for now. He could not comment on how much Aecom plans to invest in the new subsidiary.

The public-private concept has disadvantages. Investing in projects can tie up capital and sometimes increase a company’s debt, said Jacobson at William Blair. What’s more, public-private partnerships are relatively new in the United States and rules governing partnerships vary from state to state. Some states don’t yet allow them.

But both Aecom and Samsung see public-private deals as an opportunity for growth. Burke said he knows of $28 billion in U.S. public-private projects planned through 2016. That’s a small fraction of the overall infrastructure market, which is upwards of $200 billion annually, but still nearly twice the amount spent on public-private projects in the past few years.

Jacobson said Aecom and other domestic firms will likely have better luck tapping that market even though they’re smaller than Samsung. Using the example of a privately built toll road, he said many Americans are resistant to the idea of tolls and would likely be much more so if they know their money is going to pay a massive Korean conglomerate rather than an American firm.

“One of the big pushbacks on public-private partnerships in the states is that a lot of times you have foreign investors involved,” he said. “You have Americans not wanting to pay tolls, and they definitely don’t want to be paying tolls to a foreign company.”