If an enterprise is compared to a person, each project is a limb or the torso, and the grassroots work crews are like red blood cells, continuously supplying nutrients to the entire body. The main pier construction crew of the Hanjiang Grand Bridge at the Zaoqian Highway Section V Project Department of China Energy Engineering Group Gezhouba Group is exactly such a diligent “red blood cell.”


The main pier construction crew of the Hanjiang Grand Bridge at the Zaoqian Highway Section V Project Department is a management team of 12 members, all born in the 1990s, leading more than 100 skilled workers. They are committed to building an innovative crew, a harmonious team, and a combat-ready collective, making outstanding contributions to the smooth fulfillment of the project contract. On April 24, the crew received the weighty “Hubei Provincial Workers' Pioneer Model Team” award.

The Hanjiang Grand Bridge is a key controlling project along the entire Zaoqian Expressway. Its substructure uses solid rectangular piers with group pile foundations. The 80 pile foundations were scheduled for a six-month construction period. The underwater main pier piles have an average hole depth of 65 meters, with the deepest reaching 75 meters. However, the Hanjiang riverbed where the piles are located lies in a fault zone with complex geological conditions. The riverbed surface is dominated by highly unstable quicksand layers, and underwater construction frequently encounters technical difficulties such as hole collapse, hammer burial, slurry loss in karst caves, and hole shrinkage.

The crew undertakes the main construction tasks for both the superstructure and substructure of the Hanjiang Grand Bridge. Facing these difficulties, the crew focused on the challenges. Through extensive mass economic and technological innovation activities and comprehensive investigation and analysis of the pile foundation construction site, they put forward 116 reasonable suggestions. Among them, the suggestion to “switch to a cylindrical structure and design a new drill bit structure” enhanced the drill bit's rigidity and increased the drilling rate through pebble and cemented rock layers. Based on this idea, they designed and manufactured a “millstone drill” bit, changing the blades from the flat shape of the original three-wing hollow drill to a pagoda shape. This improvement increased the drill bit's “taper,” enhanced its rigidity, and raised the drilling rate through pebble and cemented rock layers. The average time per pile foundation was shortened by 148 hours, successfully solving the problem of low construction efficiency for the main pier pile foundations.

To further consolidate the innovation results, the crew also issued documents in standardized form, including the “Hanjiang Bridge Pile Foundation Drilling Construction Work Instruction,” “Slag Barrel Fabrication Process Standard,” and “Millstone Drill Fabrication Process Standard.” They strictly followed the processes during construction, ensuring stable pile foundation construction efficiency and meeting the owner's milestone schedule requirements. Through the effective implementation of consolidation measures, the main pier pile foundation construction efficiency of the Hanjiang Grand Bridge remained stable. All pile foundations of the Hanjiang Grand Bridge successfully passed third-party inspection and were all rated as Class I piles.

In safety work, the crew started with details, adopted strong measures in technology, organization, and management, and resolved and eliminated various unsafe factors. They also used realistic simulation for safety education and training of crew members, avoiding “false, exaggerated, and empty” boilerplate content, seeking truth from facts, and improving the safety awareness and capabilities of all personnel. In studying the “Ten Prohibitions on Production” and “Identification of New Hazard Sources,” all crew members achieved a 100% pass rate in related assessments, helping the project department win the honorary title of “Safe Construction Site” from higher-level units multiple times.