The company designs power plants in Orlando and manufactures them at out-of-state sites. In a prepared statement, the company says it has new equipment orders for $4 billion and a backlog of $8.8 billion from previous contracts.

Year-to-date sales are $2 billion. The Orlando division is Siemens AG's most profitable arm, company officials say.

This is the Siemens Westinghouse's largest expansion since the parent company, based in Berlin and Munich, paid $1.5 billion to Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Corp. in 1997 for its power generation sector. This division has been operating in Orlando since 1981.

Siemens Westinghouse plans to build a four-story, 225,000-sf building with an estimated hard construction cost of $40 million by early 2003 to complement a four-story, 225,000-sf structure just completed at the same estimated cost in east Orange County near the Central Florida Research Park.

At the park, Siemens leases 80,000 sf on an estimated 10-year renewed lease valued at about $17 million, according to area leasing agents familiar with the east Orange County-University of Central Florida office-industrial submarket.

Siemens would not confirm construction costs which were estimated for GlobeSt.com by area construction industry estimators familiar with comparable projects.

The company also has a telecom-switch plant in suburban Lake Mary, FL. Siemens Westinghouse's current staff of 7,885 is comprised of 3,500 workers in Orlando; 1,400 in suburban Lake Mary, FL; 1,000 in Ontario, Canada; 835 in Charlotte; 400 each in Fort Payne, AL and Alpharetta, GA; and 350 in Winston-Salem, NC.