North Outer Ring Road of Anqing Wins Luban Prize

Recently, the China Construction Industry Association announced the first batch of winners of the “Luban Prize for Construction Project (Luban Prize for short, for national quality projects)” for the period between 2018-2019, and the north outer ring road of Anqing, a project fulfilled by UCD, was among the prominently listed. This heavy honor will go into the history of UCD’s development and make UCD’s brands shine more brightly.

Known as the “Oscar of the Chinese construction industry”, “Luban Prize” is the highest award for the construction quality and represents the highest level of construction quality in China at present. UCD’s winning of the Luban Prize is the crystallization of unremitting efforts and speaks volume for the connotation of the entrepreneurship of “originality, responsibility, innovation and struggle”.

A First-ever Demonstration Project

September 28, 2016 is a day worth keeping in mind forever. On this day, the north outer ring road of Anqing, the first-ever PPP project, was all completed and opened to traffic. The project has radically changed the history of Anqing having no outer ring roads in its urban road network and is of great significance to expanding the city’s urban framework, expediting its urban construction, fostering an interconnected transportation system, and building a fast passage between Anqing and its surrounding cities.

Starting from the new exit of Anqing’s He’an airport expressway in the west and ending at Wanjiang Avenue in the east, the outer ring road in the north of Anqing has a total length of 14.93 kilometers, with a bridge-tunnel ratio of 28.68% and a projected speed of 60 kilometers per hour. It took 16 months altogether for the completion of the project, which was started in June 2015 and was opened to traffic on September 28, 2016. The road is an urban trunk road with the longest single mileage, the largest scale and the biggest amount of investment in the history of key project construction and even municipal road construction of Anqing.

As the country's first public welfare PPP demonstration municipal road project, the road has been listed by the Ministry of Finance among the second batch of demonstration projects under the cooperation between government and social capital, as well as the first of Anqing’s “Seven Ones Projects” in 2015, attracting wide attention from all sectors of society and realizing a series of innovations. The project has effectively resolved the problem of how to standardize the use of the PPP model in pure public welfare projects, and explorations have been made actively in terms of operation mode and performance evaluation, and innovations have been made boldly, thus providing successful experience for the PPP model being adopted for pure public welfare projects in the whole province and even across the country.

The north outer ring road, the first winner of Luban Prize for the city of Anqing, has won honor for the city and will be written into the city’s development history.

Legend Continues from Difficulties Surmounted

The selection criteria for the Luban Prize are very high and the competition is extremely fierce. The north outer ring road of Anqing won this honor by painstaking efforts and hard work of countless strivers and by dint of unremitting efforts and collective wisdom.

There were loads of difficulties in the construction of the project. The whole project involves 3 district governments, 4 township governments and 11 administrative villages, stretching a long construction front. More than 100 pipelines were relocated, including 18 tap water pipelines, 19 high-voltage power lines, 35 low-voltage power lines, 43 comprehensive pipelines and 3 national defense military optical cables. The relocation work was arduous.  The slow demolition would certainly affect the construction in later period. If the construction period could not be guaranteed, the performance of the contract would be at risk and the company’s reputation would be damaged. In order to speed up the demolition, the project team worked out a detailed division of tasks, coordinated relevant departments of Anqing municipal government to organize 39 special coordination meetings, and completed the demolition within 3 months.

Difficulties came one after another, with the degree of difficulty constantly increasing in the process. The water systems along the project were rich, the silt soil along the whole line was thick, with the sediment thickness of fish pond silt being about 4m on average, and a total of 7 bridges needed to be constructed across the water systems, and the maximum width of the blocked water surface was 877m. One could hardly walk in the thick of the silt, so the difficulty of bridging was imaginable. Because Anqing is located in the Yangtze River Basin, it is extremely vulnerable to waterlogging due to the influence of Meiyu season. On June 28, 2016, Anqing was hit by heavy rains that had not been seen in 50 years. The project team withstood the pressure and defeated the dangerous situations in impregnable solidarity, thus consolidating their high morale in hard struggle.

The construction period was 24 months, which posed a severe test for the project team's willpower, organizational strength and combat effectiveness. If the project was constructed according to the traditional model, it could not be fulfilled with such a huge amount of work and in such a complicated environment. In the face of the difficulties, UCD’s leaders visited the site every month to hold a dispatch meeting energetically supported by the subsidiary companies. By giving play to the spirit of “white plus black” and “five plus two”, the project team feared neither bitterness nor fatigue to leave every stone unturned to surmout all difficulties and opened up a construction service road in a vast land, winning precious time for the construction. In order to guarantee the construction period, the project team mobilized superior resources according to the characteristics of the project, formed six divisions to carry out parallel construction, grabbed the progress, and advanced the internal control period to 16 months, eight months ahead of the contract period, winning the reputation of “Anqing Model” and “Beijing Speed”.

Originality and Quality Spreading Far and Wide

The Luban Prize is not only an honor, but also a culture, a spirit of striving for perfection and excellence. It was the company that incorporated this ingenuity into every employee’s blood and condensed it into the development gene of the enterprise that created this ingenious work.

It was the strength, innovation, originality and excellence that brought the project among the winners of Luban Prize.

The application of road load monitoring system has become an “artifact” to control vehicle overload and protect road service life. The system uses piezoelectric sensing dynamic weighing technology, video monitoring technology, induction coil and other technologies, which can realize the dynamic weighing function for various normal running vehicles and can detect the axle weight, gross weight, vehicle type, flow rate, speed and acceleration of passing vehicles in real time within the speed range of 10 - 200 km/h.

The technical innovation of large-area shallow water pipe piles has solved the key technical problem of dry construction of water bridges. The project included 12 bridges, inclusive of 5 bridges across the lake. According to the construction plan, the bridge substructure construction should be completed before the flood season. In order to ensure the construction period, quality and safety, the company organized the project team to develop a “study and application of the construction technology of the pipe pile - membrane - soil combined weir in large shallow water areas”, which was suitable for large water areas with water depths of 1m ~ 4m and less water permeability in the bottom soil layers, especially for cofferdam construction of porous wading bridges and hydraulic structures with spans below 50m. The application of this technology has solved the key technical problem of the project’s water bridge dry work and formed a reliable, economical, practical, environment-friendly and energy-saving construction technology, which provides a reference for the construction of similar projects.

The application of urban lighting monitoring and management system has brought good social and economic benefits. In order to realize the remote monitoring and automation of urban street lighting, the project adopts the latest generation of digital urban lighting monitoring management system, which is simple to construct, unharmful to the original environment and low in implementation cost and is basically unaffected by external environmental factors. The system can automatically divide into sections according to the time period and control the timing switch by shunting. Not only did the system save manpower in the construction, but it also eliminated contradictions and mistakes caused by human factors and effectively saved electric energy. According to the calculation of 13 hours of street lamp operation per day, the annual electricity cost can be saved by more than 1.5 million yuan. In this way, the operation cost can be reduced, and the energy conservation and environmental protection can be realized to the maximum extent.

With the spirit of pursuing excellence, the north outer ring road of Anqing has been refreshing various data and has been listed by the Ministry of Finance as one of the top ten PPP project demonstration cases in the country, winning four national awards such as the National Demonstration Project for Innovative Technology Application in Construction, the National Construction Project Construction Safety Production Standardization Site, and the First Prize for National Excellent Project Management Achievement First Prize. The project has won the Great Wall Cup Gold Medal for Beijing's Construction Structure and Completion, the Demonstration Project of New Technology Application in Anhui Construction Industry, and the Pioneer of Anhui Workers. “Construction Technology of Pipe Pile - Membrane - Soil Combined Weir in Large Area and Shallow Water Area” has won the “Certificate of Scientific and Technological Achievements” and “A Multi - function Quality Detector” has won a national patent for utility model.

Not only is the originality embodied in the physical quality, but also in the service quality. In order to do a good job in operation and maintenance services, UCD invested in more than 3 million Yuan to have developed the Municipal Road Operation and Maintenance Informatization Monitoring Platform to exercise the management of the project in an information-oriented, technological and real-time way. In the past two years of operation and maintenance of the project, the project has won unanimous praises from Anqing municipal government, enterprises and neighboring residents by virtue of high-quality operation and maintenance, satisfactory service and effective communication, overfulfilling the task of collecting operation and maintenance service fees. As a result, the project has attracted wide attention from the outside world and has received more than 400 study tours from all over the country. People's Daily, Guangming Network and other mainstream media reported the project and hailed it as “a pioneering road” and “the most beautiful road”, thus greatly enhancing the popularity of Anqing.

The originality has not only won UCD’s reputation but also the real benefit. Since the operation and maintenance of the project, the receivable indicators have been excellent, and the rate of return has been upward of 100%. At the same time, UCD has obtained the corresponding return on investment.

Originality builds up the dream up to the Luban Prize. Remember where you started and set out again with the reputation. On the 60th anniversary of UCD’s establishment, we will take pride in the reputation, climb to the top bravely, uphold originality, continue to pursue dreams and create more classic works.