Glavmosstroy is the top national brand in Russia – a position which it has achieved through its long-term and many-faceted activities in construction and planning, within Moscow and all over Russia.

     In the 1950s the town planning companies underwent reorganisation. A decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union dated 26 April 1954 created the Principal Office of Residential and Civic Construction in Moscow (Glavnoe upravlenie po zhilischnomu i grazhdanskomu stroitel’stvu v Moskve) – Glavmosstroy, an office with ministry-equivalent status.

     Glavmosstroy united 53 general construction and specialised business organisations, 255 construction and specialised offices, over 600 manufacturing enterprises and organisations. The employees of the resulting organisation numbered 114,000 blue-collar workers, 15,000 engineering and technical staff and 4,000 administrative personnel. These people laid the foundations of the enterprise that is called Glavmosstroy today. Only 10 years after its foundation, Glavmosstroy was, for its unique achievements in town planning and construction, awarded the highest honour in the country – the Lenin medal

     In its half-century-long history, Glavmosstroy has provided around 150m2 of floor space – around three-quarters of the residential space available to the capital today. It has erected unique public buildings, hospitals and clinics, cultural and sports spaces: the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, Hotel “Rossiya”, “Izmailovo” hotel complex, the circus on Vernadskiy Avenue, the N. Sats Chidren’s Theatre, the Centres for Oncology and Cardiology, the Moscow Art Academic Theatre, the former home of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and parts of the Monastery of St. Daniel, as well as restoring the Tretyakov Gallery and conducting many other projects.

     Another milestone in the history of Glavmosstroy construction was the planning and building undertaken in residential areas of Moscow on the “contract” method. In the last 10 years we have constructed residential complexes, fully provided with infrastructure and services, in Kryukovo, Mitino, Zhulebino, Mar’inskiy Park, South and North Butovo.

     Today Glavmosstroy is a joint stock company – a holding company that comprises a balanced system of various organisations, allowing the company to conduct projects ranging from investment and planning to construction and utilization of existing sites. Glavmosstroy is the contractor employed by the local government of Moscow in its housing construction programme, and in many of its other projects – it has therefore all the resources necessary to carry out even the most complex architectural projects.

     The structure of Glavmosstroy, which today employs around 50,000 people, comprises over 70 organisations, including monolithic construction departments, general and specialised construction organisations, manufacturing enterprises, project owner services, planning organisations, mechanisation, housing services, building utilization, insurance and safety enterprises, the Independent commercial bank, and the Central mortgage company.

     The construction side of Glavmosstroy’s activity comprises large-scale constructions of residential blocks in the capital, elite homes and blocks of flats in the Central Administrative Area of Moscow and in other areas, the reconstruction of unique historical buildings and houses, the erection of pre-school facilities for children, schools and gymnasia of both standard and individual formats, hospitals, clinics and other buildings.

     Glavmosstroy’s conception of residential development is founded on the principle of a pragmatic balance between assembly and monolithic construction for the benefit of Moscow and Muscovites.

     In the first place, this means using a new system of large-panel construction, GMS-1, developed by the capital’s leading master-architects in cooperation with Glavmosstroy specialists, led by the first deputy Head Architect of Moscow, Yu. P. Grigoriev. GMS-1 is a system of construction using prefabricated block-sections, which takes into account modern construction standards and the needs of future residents. It also provides for the possibility of changes to the architectural design of residential buildings. The reconstruction of Glavmosstroy factories will allow us to achieve an output of 500,000 m2 total floorspace built using the new system by 2005.

     Secondly, along with increasing the volume of traditional monolithic construction, our conception involves the creation of a special new system of monolithic construction, GMS-3. Whereas GMS-1 signals a move away from mass-production in full-assembly technology, the GMS-3 system introduces standardisation into monolithic construction, unlimited in its planning possibilities.

     As its contribution to the continually expanding Moscow residential housing programme, Glavmosstroy is capable of producing up to 1 million m2 of residential space per year. From 2004 that capacity will be made up of 500,000m2 of space in large-panel houses, and 500,000m2 in monolithic blocks, erected either on the basis of individual plans or using basic block-sections.

     Glavmosstroy’s principles are these: quality as the top priority – a continual striving for product improvement, and laying the foundations for further development of our potential and our image.