At 20:00 on February 19, after 8 hours of intensive work, the first pile cap for the main pier of the Shaozhou Bridge on the Jixin Expressway—a key construction project of Henan Province's "13445" program undertaken by China Railway No. 4 Engineering Group—was completed.

The main bridge of the Shaozhou Bridge is 488 meters long, with a maximum bridge height of 52.5 meters. Its substructure adopts a combined design of column piers and hollow thin-walled piers, comprising 6 hollow thin-walled piers and 32 cylindrical piers. Hollow thin-walled piers, due to their large section modulus, light self-weight, and good structural stiffness and strength, are mostly used for high bridges. Each hollow pier has a pile cap beneath it, through which the loads transmitted from the pier shaft are borne and distributed, ensuring the stability of the project foundation. The pile cap, as a reinforced concrete structure set at the top of foundation piles to connect the pile tops, is an important foundation engineering component.

The pile cap poured this time is for Pier 7 on the left span of the Shaozhou Bridge, with a height of 3 meters, a length of 8 meters, and a width of 7.5 meters, and a designed concrete volume of 180 cubic meters. To ensure a successful pile cap pour, the technical personnel planned ahead, worked out all data meticulously and precisely, determined the optimal construction plan, and continuously optimized it in light of actual site conditions. During construction, each procedure was carried out in strict accordance with standardization requirements, with strict control over the concrete mix ratio, pouring speed, vibration process, and temperature, so as to ensure the overall pouring quality of the pile cap.