After almost five years of hard work, the Hefei-Fuzhou passenger dedicated line (PDL), which runs 850 kilometers (528 miles) between the two cities, was officially opened on June 28, 2015, after the completion of a three-month testing and commissioning by the Shanghai Railway Bureau.  It is the first high-speed rail (HSR) project completed by AECOM in China, with the company expecting to complete two other HSR projects in 2016 and 2018.

“This project has set up an important milestone in China’s national railway project as it was unprecedented to appoint a foreign consultant to provide professional construction supervision service.  It has been our privilege to assist the client in leveraging our global expertise and experience to raise the standard of local practice,” said AECOM’s Morgan Yang, vice president, transportation, China.

Designed with the maximum speed of 350 kilometers per hour (217 miles per hour) and currently operating at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour (186 miles per hour), the Hefei-Fuzhou PDL is part of the Beijing to Fuzhou HSR which cuts the travel time between the capitals of the Anhui and Fujian provinces from eight hours to less than four hours.  Given its geographical landscapes, around 86 percent of the railway alignment is built by bridges or tunnels in the mountainous area.

Since 2010, AECOM and its joint venture partner the First Design Institute of the China Railway Construction Corporation were assigned to supervise one of eight construction lots within the Anhui province, which was the longest section of the PDL, covering 80 kilometers (50 miles) of viaducts, 2.2 kilometers (1.3 miles) of tunnels and 6.6 kilometers (4 miles) of embankment.  AECOM’s main responsibility was to provide program and construction management as well as to ensure the quality and safety of the work with the local supervision professionals.

Keeping safety, health and environment sustainable was one of the many challenges faced in the project.  In order to reinforce the safety awareness of the workers, safety inspections were regularly conducted.  Moreover, safety trainings to the contractor’s staff were also held on specific areas like tunneling and viaduct construction, with an aim to elevate the safety standards on site.

Led by Hanson Sze, AECOM’s chief supervision engineer, the team achieved zero time loss incidents on site under the high risk operation of launching 2,075 pieces of more than 800-tons of precast concrete girder throughout the project.