On September 25, the much-anticipated “golden phoenix” Beijing Daxing International Airport was officially opened to navigation. Daxing Airport is a major project decided by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, a landmark project for the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and a new driving force for the country’s development. With its grand scale, advanced concept, exquisite design, difficult construction, extremely short construction period and fruitful achievements, it has made a significant contribution in the history of infrastructure construction in the world, and is praised by foreign media as “the first of the new seven wonders of the world”，that makes Tongji people feel proud. During the planning and construction of this super project, the wisdom and sweat of Tongji people are embodied in terms of their professional advantages in planning, design, management, construction and other aspects, making achievements in the airport construction, and helping the “golden phoenix” of Beijing new airport to fly high. According to incomplete statistics, during the construction of Beijing’s new airport, Tongji University directly undertook 6 important research projects, among which the progress control team made outstanding contributions to ensuring the timely completion and operation of the airport. In addition, there are more than 40 Tongji alumni in different key positions involved in the construction of the new airport.

Tongji team escorts for on-time completion of the airport construction and operation preparation

As the largest air-land integrated transport hub in China, following the construction policy of “to lead the world airport construction, build global airport benchmarking”, Beijing Daxing International Airport is committed to become a new source of power in a country’s development, providing the demonstration for the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, while having the characteristics of multi-investment subjects, large scale, great comprehensiveness, tight construction period, a large number of owners and the contractors, different operations planning and operations professional support units, more complex interface crosses. All kinds of uncertainty factors interact, affecting the  comprehensive coordination promoting of construction organization and management, and operation preparations with great difficulty, “unprecedented”, so to speak.

In order to achieve the two goals of “complete construction by June 30, 2019” and “navigate by September 30, 2019″ as scheduled, the CAAC invited Tongji University to conduct comprehensive management and control over the construction and operation preparation of Beijing Daxing International Airport at the end of April 2018. Tongji University immediately organized a team with core members of key youth teachers, doctors and postgraduate students for overall progress control which was led by senior professors of project management institute. The team was divided into two working groups, stationed in the airport construction site, conducted the scientific management and control for the  airport construction and operation preparation progress, respectively focused on the “CAAC overall progress integrated control” “airport construction progress control”, among which, the comprehensive control plan of CAAC was implemented by a team led by Professor Chen Jianguo and Teacher Tang Kewei, and the overall schedule planning and tracking control of the airport headquarters was implemented by a team led by Professor Jia Guangshe, Professor Wang Guangbin and Associate Professor Sun Jide.

Beijing Daxing International Airport implements “integration of construction and operation preparation”, which brings more complexity to the progress control work. At the request of CAAC, Tongji team has prepared The Comprehensive Control Plan of the Overall Progress for airport construction and operation. After full investigation, Tongji team tease out 16 key lines from more than 30,000 tasks, and extracted “366+8” key control nodes through the key route method, empirical method and comparative method. Subsequently, continuous optimization resulted in the final version of The Comprehensive Control Plan of the Overall Progress, which was officially released by the CAAC Daxing Airport office in August 2018. After the release of the plan, the research group made accurate measurements of the total progress of the project on a regular basis, accurately reflecting the degree to which the work progress of each node deviated from the target and related problems, so as to support leaders and decision makers at all levels to accurately judge and dispatch the project progress. At the same time, at the request of airport construction headquarters, Tongji team compiled The Overall Progress Plan for the Project Construction and Operation Preparation,  key node containing 247 key nodes (including 112 for construction and 135 for operational preparations), 5547 detailed  operation work (including 2831 for construction and 2716 for operational preparations), 7 categories of key problems and countermeasures, 113 items of handover and takeover list, 73 progress tracking problems. Also, Tongji team issued Beijing Daxing International Airport Construction and Management Progress Control Report by a monthly period, which objectively not only reflected the complete situation of monthly key nodes, construction and management work plan of 22 departments and 19 professional companies, also arranged construction and management work plan for the next month’s key nodes and deployment in advance, especially pointing out the progress risk tracking situation, key points and difficult problems in recent work, and putting forward some suggestions. Under the escort of Tongji team, the airport construction and operation preparation work was not only completed successfully, but also 1.7 months of construction period was saved.

In addition, Ling Jianming’s team form the department of transportation engineering of Tongji University took charge of “key technology research and application of intelligent comprehensive transportation hub construction for the new airport in Beijing”, Du Yuchuan’s team took the “feasibility study on Beijing’s new airport parking building,” Liu Jianguo’s team took charge of “under-earth railway box culvert whole process maximum pressure research of the airport economic zone of Beijing new airport”, Zhou Xuanyi’s team from civil engineering college was responsible for “Beijing’s new airport project research on wind load”, while Guo Xiaonong’s team was responsible for “steel structure node test for maintenance facilities project  of  southern base first section in Beijing new airport”. All these researches provided technical support for the construction of Beijing’s new airport.

Tongji graduates are the backbone of Beijing’s new airport construction

Tongji university, as the top institution of higher learning in civil engineering, has graduates from all aspects of civil aviation airport construction. Its graduates were deeply involved in the construction and operation preparation progress of Daxing airport, who played an important role in promoting the airport at different levels and positions.

At the level of industry leaders, a group of Tongji alumni were directly involved in the decision-making and management of the construction of Beijing’s new airport. Wang Zhiqing, who graduated from Tongji University in 1984, is the deputy leader of the leading group for the construction and operation of Beijing Daxing airport, and the leader of the air traffic control transportation group, having been to Daxing airport for many times to conduct on-site investigation, supervise and coordinate relevant work. Liu Chunchen and Diao Yonghai, two directors of the leading group CAAC office of Daxing airport construction, are both road engineering graduates of Tongji University and responsible for the overall coordination of Daxing airport construction. Zhang Haidong, Han Xingjun, Zhou Xin and other Tongji alumni who worked in CAAC and the leading group office of preparation for the construction and operation of the new airport did a lot of specific coordination work. Though the new airport construction has the characteristics of tight construction time, heavy tasks, many intersections and difficulty in coordination, under the endeavor of the leading group and the office, and all construction parties, it has created a total of more than 40 international, domestic First, has won more than 50 major awards, 103 technical patents, 65 new construction methods, over 98% of the localization rate. Though there were thousands of construction units and 50,000 people working at the same time during the peak period of construction, it realized a whole process maintaining “safety production of zero accident”, fully achieved the goal of integrity  project.

At the level of project management, a group of Tongji graduates are on the front line to check the quality and progress of project construction. Wu Zhihui, deputy commander of construction headquarters of Beijing Daxing International Airport, is 1984 graduate from Tongji Road major, who took 11 years, from site selection to construction, fully involved, presiding over the Beijing Daxing International Airport project planning and design work, leading the team to milestone success of the project, including the initiating of the project and the feasibility study report approval which  laid a solid foundation for the starting up and construction of the new airport. After the start of construction, Wu Zhihui is fully responsible for the construction of the airfield. He is conscientious, down-to-earth and innovative, and was named “the most beautiful worker of the nation” in 2019. Kong Yu and Chen Long served as the deputy general manager of the airfield engineering department and made important contributions to the construction of the airfield.  The CAAC quality supervision team led by Tong Daishan and Lin Jian was responsible for Daxing airport civil aviation professional engineering quality supervision work, strictly controlling the airport construction quality. The team led by Wang Liping and Wan Chaojun respectively undertook the supervision of bid 3 and bid 4 of the project in the airfield and the supervision of the electromechanical weak current project in some terminals. With the joint efforts of all parties, the primary acceptance rate of Daxing International Airport project is 100%, and all the 13 key construction indicators have reached the world-class level.

In the technical support level, Tongji graduates show their professions in planning, design, survey, construction, supervision and other aspects. Wen Shiqiang, Road major 1984 graduate, Jiang Chichang, Road major 1981 graduate, and Chen Wangchun who graduated from 2004 geological engineering led the planning and design research institute of CAAC project team,  with 17 of backbone team members of Tongji University graduates, taking charge of the service from site selection, preliminary feasibility study, feasibility study, overall planning, preliminary design, construction drawing design to the main body design coordination and late service of Beijing Daxing International Airport, participating and witnessing the Daxing International Airport from blueprints to the implementation of projects. Shao Weiping, a graduate of architecture major of 1980, was the director of the new airport control planning. He changed the traditional thinking of planning and designing the airport according to the functional park, and proposed that Daxing new airport is an airport city that transformed it from functional construction to comprehensive construction through the methods of urban planning and design. Beijing survey and design institute team led by Xu Hongsheng, 1983 graduate from hydrogeology major and Gao Wenming, 1987 graduate from geotechnical engineering provided seven-year service for the new airport, running through the whole construction life cycle, including civil service, pipelines, roads, pipe rack, bridges, rail transportation, etc., involving professions of geotechnical engineering survey, geological disaster assessment, foundation treatment and foundation pit supporting design and construction, foundation detection and monitoring, that ensured the safety of the foundation of the new airport.Airport fast line is one of the important supporting projects for new airports. Daxing Airport fast line is one of the fastest in China fast urban rail line, with top speed of 160 km/h, using automatic operation system, CBTC signal system, running with high speed and high density. Xu Yongcheng, 1991 graduate from railway engineering major is the engineering technical  leader of airport fast line, providing technical support for airport fast line project. In the airport construction and supervision work, there are also Tongji graduates’ outstanding contributions. The concrete area of the airfield road project in the airfield area is 9.5 million square meters, which is equivalent to the total length of the road from the second ring road to the sixth ring road in Beijing. Bai Xuyao, Road major 1984 graduate, led the Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group team to complete the airfield road construction work with high quality.

Tongji graduates were also responsible for the urban design of the new airport, the design of the road network and parking facilities, the design and examination of the airport terminal viaduct, the traffic organization in front of the building and the airport road side road network. These are just some of the Tongji representatives involved in the construction of Beijing Daxing International Airport. Tongji people will continue to give full play to their professional advantages and contribute their wisdom and strength to the goal set forth in the Outline for the construction of a powerful nation of transportation.