At the start of the new year, good news keeps arriving.

Recently, the "Beijing Key Laboratory of Geotechnical Engineering for Deep Foundation Pits in Urban Rail Transit" was successfully established at Beijing Urban Construction Exploration & Surveying Design Research Institute. This is a major breakthrough in the institute's science and technology platform development and provides an important platform for its scientific and technological innovation work during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period.

Recently, the list of recognized 2016 Beijing Key Laboratories and Engineering Technology Centers, organized by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, was publicly announced online. Beijing Urban Construction Exploration & Surveying Design Research Institute was successfully approved for the "Beijing Key Laboratory of Geotechnical Engineering for Deep Foundation Pits in Urban Rail Transit."

In accordance with the spirit of the Interim Measures for the Recognition and Management of Beijing Key Laboratories, the Interim Measures for the Recognition and Management of Beijing Engineering Technology Research Centers, and relevant application notices, and after strict qualification review, expert evaluation, and on-site inspection, the institute stood out from numerous research institutes, enterprises, and institutions by virtue of its strong scientific research strength and technical advantages, and was recognized as the "Beijing Key Laboratory of Geotechnical Engineering for Deep Foundation Pits in Urban Rail Transit."

A total of 69 Beijing Key Laboratories were recognized in 2016. Among them, only two key laboratories were established with enterprises as the supporting entity, including Beijing Urban Construction Exploration & Surveying Design Research Institute; the rest were all universities, hospitals, and research institutes. This fully demonstrates the institute's scientific and technological research and development capabilities and technical strength.

The recognition as a Beijing Key Laboratory affirms the institute's strong comprehensive research strength in applied basic and frontier research and common key technology research in the field of urban rail transit geotechnical engineering over the long term. It marks that the institute has a high academic level and research achievements in this field, is in a leading position in the field, masters core technologies and owns independent intellectual property rights, has a strong accumulation of industry basic technical data, and has strong innovation capacity and industry radiation capacity. It shows that Beijing Urban Construction Exploration & Surveying Design Research Institute has formed a scientific and technological innovation talent team of a certain scale, reasonable structure, and rich experience, and possesses good scientific research innovation conditions and infrastructure, a sound organizational system, management system, and operating mechanism, and the ability to independently complete or lead scientific research innovation.

After being recognized as the "Beijing Key Laboratory of Geotechnical Engineering for Deep Foundation Pits in Urban Rail Transit," Beijing Urban Construction Exploration & Surveying Design Research Institute will be committed to research on geotechnical engineering issues related to the future vertical deep development of rail transit projects. In view of the fact that shallow-buried laying methods for rail transit projects at the current stage can no longer meet the development of urban construction, and the concept of deep-buried laying has entered the planning and design stage, the institute will carry out research in advance on new technologies and methods for the future trend of vertical deep development of rail transit projects in various aspects, including survey operations, groundwater control, foundation pit excavation and support, and monitoring and early warning. It will strive to develop new exploration and geophysical prospecting technologies and construction machinery and equipment suitable for rail transit in confined spaces; achieve underground dynamic monitoring and automated control of groundwater pumping and drawdown; determine groundwater design water levels and control standards; establish underground anti-floating design standards and technical standards for groundwater dewatering and reinjection; form core technologies for high-precision 3D simulation data acquisition and modeling; establish a geotechnical engineering database and a 3D numerical simulation analysis platform; and complete research on quality and safety inspection technologies for the entire life cycle of rail transit projects.

Beijing Key Laboratories are an important part of Beijing's scientific and technological innovation system, a beneficial supplement and reserve force for national key laboratories, an important base for carrying out high-level basic research and applied basic research, gathering and cultivating outstanding scientific and technological talents, and conducting academic exchanges, a booster for promoting the development of strategic emerging industries, and an important platform for researching frontier technologies and common key technologies, leading industry technological innovation, and enhancing Beijing's scientific and technological research capabilities.