"Four News" Leads Independent "Micro-Innovation" — Pingyi Expressway Builds a Quality Project with High Standards. The Pingyi Expressway is the expressway project with the longest mileage under construction and the largest investment scale in Hunan Province. It starts at Shiniuzhai Town, Pingjiang County, at the border of Hunan and Jiangxi, and ends at Bijiaoshan Township, Heshan District, Yiyang, with a main line length of 176.66 kilometers. The project adheres to the guidance of the "Four News," strengthens construction management and scientific and technological innovation, and builds a quality project with high standards and high quality.

Pingyi Expressway Builds a Quality Project with High Standards

Promote the "Four New Technologies." Use automated equipment such as welding robots, CNC reinforcement cage seam welding machines, integral hydraulic stainless steel formwork for prefabricated box girders, integral trolleys for cable trenches, self-propelled mobile trestles, and automatic lifting steel arch excavation trolleys to improve the level of automation in construction of subgrades, bridges, tunnels, and other works. In response to the difficulties in deep-water foundation construction for bridges, optimize the cap structure of the Nanyang Xiangjiang Grand Bridge and create the province's first "∞"-shaped double-wall steel cofferdam structure without an internal support system. The bridge has a main span of 120 meters and is currently the largest-span corrugated steel web cantilever-assembled girder bridge in China.

Launch independent "micro-innovation." Take the national lead in using integral mobile hydraulic formwork trolleys to assist in the construction of bridge anti-collision guardrails. Compared with traditional construction methods, the number of workers per shift is reduced by 50%, work efficiency is doubled, and the risk of personnel working on the outer side of the guardrail is avoided. This process won the Silver Award at the First National Highway "Micro-Innovation" Competition. Build a "smart beam yard" management and control platform, set up business function modules such as steel processing, intelligent concrete control, and beam production management and control, and integrate intelligent hardware equipment such as intelligent video, intelligent mixing stations, presses, and beam production monitoring to achieve precise control of the production and operation status of the beam yard. This achievement was selected for the "China Highway and Transportation Society 2020 Green Highway + Quality Engineering Technology and Product Catalog."

Advance safety management. Apply an intelligent tunnel management and control system that integrates tunnel video monitoring, personnel attendance, regional positioning, safety early warning, and post-disaster emergency rescue. Through data linkage, strengthen monitoring of personnel, equipment, and construction inside tunnels. Promote intelligent supervision of major risks, using video monitoring and safety risk data collection to implement visual management of major risk source areas such as centralized stations, extra-large bridges, and work at heights.

Innovate environmental protection measures. For the first time in a provincial expressway project, promote concrete sand and gravel separators and sewage treatment systems to achieve zero discharge and zero pollution of concrete wastewater and waste residue. Following the concept of "returning a lake of clear water to Dongting Lake," for the first time promote prestressed PHC pipe pile construction technology on a large scale in bridge construction in the lake area, which both saves costs and reduces the impact on the lake area environment.

The Pingyi Expressway was rated as a "Excellent Provincial Key Construction Project" in Hunan Province for 2020, ranked first in the province's "Safe Site" supervision assessment and safety production management work for expressways and key waterway engineering projects under construction, and is the only expressway project in Hunan Province to receive supervision from the Ministry of Transport and be fully affirmed. Since the beginning of this year, mainstream media such as CCTV, Science and Technology Daily, People's Daily Online, Workers' Daily, China Transportation News, Hunan TV, and Hunan Daily have reported on it many times. At the end of July, it was also the only invited project from Hunan to participate in the 2021 National Major Transportation Project Publicity Linkage Mechanism collective interview activity held by the Ministry of Transport.

The "One Meeting, Three Cards" System Has Achieved Good Trial Results

According to the "High-Quality Construction Work Plan for Expressways" of the Hunan Provincial Department of Transportation, in June this year, expressways under construction began trialing the "One Meeting, Three Cards" system (pre-shift safety production meeting, work key points card, risk warning card, and emergency response card).

The "Three Cards" are closely integrated with the characteristics of expressway construction in Hunan Province. According to the different key work parts and types of work such as subgrade, pavement, bridges, and tunnels, a total of 107 cards were designed and produced. "That is to say, the cards for each type of work are different. Frontline workers can clearly understand their work key points, possible risks, and how to respond to emergencies," introduced Ren Chengzhi, Party Secretary and Director of the Provincial Transportation Quality and Safety Bureau. The "One Meeting, Three Cards" system covers every frontline worker, controls from the source, tightens the safety "fence," and truly ensures that safety production work starts from the grassroots level.

The Pingyi Expressway crosses two expressways and one railway line, and girder erection construction is the focus of safety risk control. "Since the trial implementation of the 'One Meeting, Three Cards' system, frontline workers on the project have generally given good feedback. Especially for some older workers, the cards can be kept in their pockets and checked at any time, which is of great help both in raising safety awareness and in emergency response to risks," introduced a relevant person in charge of the Pingyi Expressway Company.

"By trialing the 'One Meeting, Three Cards' system, safety production requirements are transmitted to frontline construction workers, which can effectively solve hidden safety hazards existing in the construction process. At the same time, it standardizes team safety management, improves grassroots safety awareness and emergency rescue capabilities, and effectively prevents and curbs the occurrence of major, frequent, and recurring safety production accidents," said Jiang Yuan, Deputy Director of the Engineering Safety Department of the Jingli Expressway.

The Zhitong Expressway is a provincial exit corridor connecting Guizhou. It is located in mountainous and hilly areas, with a bridge-to-tunnel ratio of 62%. At this stage, safety risks are mainly manifested in bridges and tunnels. Chen Xiaobo, Deputy General Manager of the Zhitong Expressway Company, said that they will combine the actual situation of the Zhitong Expressway project to formulate an implementation plan for advancing the "One Meeting, Three Cards" system on the Zhitong Expressway, and after producing the cards, urge contractors to distribute them to frontline workers.

After the trial, the "One Meeting, Three Cards" system is being fully rolled out on expressways under construction throughout the province.