On October 20, the Chishui River Grand Bridge, a control project of the Gujin Expressway invested by Shudao Expressway Group and constructed by Sichuan Road & Bridge Bridge Company, was successfully closed, marking the formal completion of the bridge's main works and laying a solid foundation for the Gujin Expressway to achieve its completion target by the end of 2023.

The Chishui River Grand Bridge is located at the border of Sichuan and Guizhou, with the Sichuan bank in Jiaoyuan Town, Gulin County and the Guizhou bank in Qingchi Town, Jinsha County. Spanning the Chishui River, it has a total length of 1,089 meters. The main bridge is a double-tower, double-cable-plane composite girder cable-stayed bridge with a span arrangement of (83.5+173.5) m + 575 m + (173.5+83.5) m and a total width of 38 meters. It is currently the double-tower, double-cable-plane composite girder cable-stayed bridge with the largest span among mountain bridges of its type in Asia. The north cable tower on the Sichuan bank is 261 meters high, and the south cable tower on the Guizhou bank is 217 meters high. The tower body adopts a tapered A-shaped configuration, and the tower crown adopts a "wine vessel" shape, echoing the culture of the Chishui River basin of "welcoming guests from all over the world with wine vessels filled with fine liquor."

To successfully complete this closure, the project team continuously collected, monitored and analyzed data for 48 hours before closure, including the steel girder temperature at the closure gap, ambient temperature, closure gap length, main girder axis, elevation, cable force, tower deviation and stress. Finally, the lifting, locking and welding of the closure segment were carried out in the early morning when the temperature was lowest, effectively reducing the impact of temperature on closure, strictly controlling the error within 3 millimeters, and ensuring the high-precision and smooth closure of the bridge.

Since construction of the Chishui River Grand Bridge began in February 2021, the project team has faced difficulties such as fragile geology, narrow sites, high construction difficulty, tight schedules and repeated epidemics. It has continuously carried out technological and process innovation. Relying on BIM technology and the "intelligent hydraulic climbing formwork" system, the team designed a double-layer composite lifting device and a rebar skeleton assembly jig frame to achieve alignment control of the main towers. At the same time, it adopted the synchronous tower-girder construction process of tapered A-shaped cable towers and wide composite girders, successively overcoming technical challenges such as large-diameter pile foundations in karst-developed areas, mass concrete pouring for pile caps, super-high supports for cross beams, linear control of super-high cable towers and concrete durability, ensuring safe and high-quality advancement of bridge construction and demonstrating the comprehensive strength and solid expertise of Shudao in bridge construction.

Up to now, the Gujin Expressway has completed a cumulative investment of 11.221 billion yuan, accounting for 96.37% of the total estimated investment. The subgrade works are 99.9% complete, pavement works 39.2%, bridge and culvert works 98.89%, tunnel works 99.84%, building works 90.1%, traffic safety works 57.92%, electromechanical works 34.2%, and landscaping works 84%. Major control projects are advancing steadily.

As an important component of the Chengdu-Guizhou corridor, a southbound route out of Sichuan, the Sichuan section of the Gujin Expressway starts at Yongle Subdistrict, Gulin County, passes through Longshan Town, Guanwen Town and Baini Town in Gulin County, and ends at the Sichuan-Guizhou border in Jiaoyuan Town, Gulin County, connecting with the Guijingu Expressway in Guizhou. With a total length of about 38.559 kilometers, it is the first mountain two-way six-lane expressway in Sichuan Province and the first high-standard corridor in southern Sichuan with a design speed of 100 kilometers per hour. After the Gujin Expressway is completed and opened to traffic, it will add a new major southbound corridor out of Sichuan. It is of important strategic significance for promoting the formation and improvement of the Sichuan-Guizhou-Chongqing–Pearl River Delta and Beibu Gulf sea-access corridors. At the same time, it will strongly promote regional economic development and provide strong support for building the Sichuan-Guizhou-Chongqing "Golden Tourism Triangle" and "Baijiu Golden Triangle," promoting the effective utilization of red resources, and boosting rural revitalization in the Wumeng Mountain area.