On the afternoon of August 9, 2024, the Beijing Municipal Major Projects Office organized the "2024 Comprehensive Emergency Drill for Sudden Incidents in Rail Transit Engineering Construction."

The drill was conducted at the construction site of the southern extension project of Beijing Subway Line 6. For the first time, the drill used a shield tunneling construction emergency as its scenario. Targeting the characteristics of shield tunneling construction and risk control, it simulated a sudden water and sand inrush at the portal of a shield launching shaft and subsidence of an adjacent municipal road surface. The drill focused on subjects including emergency incident reporting, emergency escape and evacuation of personnel, emergency response to water and sand inrush during shield launching construction, emergency response to traffic impacts from ground collapse, and emergency material allocation capability.

The drill took place during Beijing's main flood season of "late July and early August," closely reflecting the realities of responding to extreme weather. By constructing extremely complex scenarios and setting unfavorable conditions to increase the difficulty of the drill, it effectively tested the emergency response capabilities of frontline command personnel and workers on engineering projects, ensuring the achievement of the work objectives of testing contingency plans, training teams, aligning mechanisms, and improving capabilities.

It is understood that this year Beijing's citywide subway projects have maintained a large-scale construction momentum. There are currently 11 subway lines (sections) under construction, with a total length of 222.7 kilometers under construction, 114 civil engineering project sections and 14 electromechanical equipment sections under construction, 40 construction enterprise group companies and 18 supervision companies participating in the entire network, and approximately more than 25,000 personnel on construction sites. The Beijing Municipal Major Projects Office attaches great importance to safety management and risk prevention in subway projects. In particular, for construction safety during the flood season, it coordinates with relevant administrative authorities to jointly supervise and urge participating units to fulfill their primary responsibility for safety, strengthen risk prevention, intensify response to extreme weather during the flood season, continuously improve emergency response capabilities for sudden incidents, and ensure construction safety.

It is reported that subway projects are characterized by large construction scale, long construction cycles, high difficulty in underground construction, and high safety risks. Compared with traditional construction methods, shield tunneling has advantages such as high construction efficiency, small impact on the surrounding environment, high safety, and superior technical and economic performance, making it especially suitable for construction in areas with complex geological conditions. At present, across the entire network of subway projects under construction in Beijing, there are 119 underground running tunnel sections, of which 81 sections use the shield tunneling method, accounting for 68%. There are 27 shield machines and 2 pipe jacking machines in operation, with the number of shield tunneling operations remaining consistently high and operating safely and orderly.

The southern extension project of Beijing Subway Line 6 has a total length of approximately 2.1 kilometers (Lucheng Station–Dongxiaoying South Station), entirely underground. A new station (Dongxiaoying South Station) is being built on the north side of the intersection of the planned Luyang Avenue and the protective green belt. The shield tunnel section starts from Dongxiaoying South Station, passes alongside the existing Jianyungou Canal and the planned Jianyungou Canal, then successively crosses beneath the existing Line 6 Dongxiaoying Depot access/exit tunnel section, the low-rise buildings of Dongxiaoying Depot, Jianyun Road, Yunhe East Street, and the utility tunnel spanning Yunhe East Street, before being received at Lucheng Station. The right line of the section is 1,507 meters long and the left line is 1,535 meters long.

It is reported that the southern extension project of Beijing Subway Line 6, as an extension of Line 6, is a project in the rail transit network plan of Beijing's municipal administrative center. The project supports the relocation of non-capital functions and assists in the construction of the municipal administrative center. It is of great significance for improving the rail transit service level and the green travel ratio of the administrative office area and living service area of the municipal administrative center, as well as for improving the transportation support functions of the municipal administrative center.