When the final 12-meter joint of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge immersed tube tunnel was successfully connected 29 meters underwater, the 'project of the century'—the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge—was about to achieve structural completion. This is a moment that has attracted worldwide attention, yet for Zhang Jinwen, the project director who has been with the bridge day and night for 13 years, the reluctance to part is hard to express. In his heart, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is a child with emotions and spirituality; now the child has grown up and is finally leaving him to travel far alone.

　　The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is an unprecedented super-large cross-boundary sea bridge. However, when the project entered the preliminary preparation stage in 2004, the 'preliminary office' had a very lean staff and a very simple organizational structure, with only two groups: the 'Engineering Technology Group' and the 'General Affairs Group'. At that time, Zhang Jinwen, only 29 years old, was the head of the Engineering Technology Group. During the six-year preliminary battle, Zhang Jinwen led his team to successfully complete the feasibility study of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge project and conducted overall planning for the construction management of the bridge. The 'Outline of the Project Management Plan for the Main Works of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge' and the 'Project Management System for the Main Works of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge' were finalized after several revisions, laying a solid foundation for the standardized and efficient operation of this 'super project'.

　　The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge connects Lantau Island of Hong Kong, the Macao Peninsula, and Zhuhai City of Guangdong Province. With a total length of 55 kilometers, the main works jointly built and managed by Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao are 29.6 kilometers long, including an undersea tunnel of about 6.7 kilometers. This is the longest concrete immersed tube tunnel among all completed and ongoing projects in the world. The transition between the bridge and the tunnel is achieved through two artificial islands in the sea. This design meets the requirement for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge to accommodate fully loaded 300,000-ton oil tankers in the future. The 'island and tunnel project' has undoubtedly become the key and difficult part of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge project.

　　'China has a world-class bridge construction team, but our experience in undersea tunnel construction is limited and relatively weak. The 6.7-kilometer 'island and tunnel project' of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is an unknown field for most Chinese engineers,' said Zhang Jinwen. After careful study, he strongly recommended and established the 'Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Island and Tunnel Project Design-Build General Contracting Model', which is rarely used in China's transportation industry. The advantage is that it can integrate the best resources worldwide and achieve the goal of 'design-construction interaction and construction-driven design'. After this new model was implemented, the project achieved remarkable results in quality, schedule, technological innovation, resource integration and coordination, simplification of management processes, and reduction of management interfaces, propelling China's immersed tube tunnel construction level to the international first-class level and gaining high recognition from Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao.

　　The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge has a complex structure and is difficult to construct. However, if decomposed from the perspective of components, it mainly consists of steel box girders and bridge deck, foundations and piers, undersea immersed tubes, and artificial islands. The steel box girders of the main works of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge use 425,000 tons of steel, about 60 Eiffel Towers, making it the first project in the world to use steel box girders on such a large scale. At the same time, the design service life of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is 120 years, and the construction period is limited. The traditional manual welding of plate units results in unstable quality and cannot guarantee the schedule.

　　In response, Zhang Jinwen proposed a bold idea: 'Can we produce steel box girders in a factory like car parts, using robotic welding and assembly line operations?' After arduous development of automated equipment and product debugging, the world's first intelligent steel box girder plate unit production line was established. The plate units produced by robotic welding on the factory assembly line are of excellent quality and high efficiency, reaching the international leading level. The fully automated production line for steel box girder plate units, promoted by Zhang Jinwen under the concept of 'factory-based, mechanized, intelligent, and information-based' production, achieved unprecedented success and drove innovation, transformation, and progress in China's steel box girder manufacturing industry. At the same time, the giant immersed tubes used for piers and undersea tunnels also achieved 'assembly line production'. Moving the main components of the 'project of the century'—the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge—into factories and onto assembly lines reflects the leading level of industrialization in today's bridge construction field.

　　Today, with the joint efforts of all builders of the bridge, the bridge works and island-tunnel works of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge have been completed. The deck pavement works, traffic engineering, and building construction are all in the final sprint stage, and the bridge is expected to open to traffic soon. 'The ultimate goal of a super project is to bring happiness to people, and for me, my mission is to inherit and surpass,' said Zhang Jinwen.