STEC Is Interviewed by Xinhua News Agency Omni-media Interview to Voice the Strongest Opinion of "Made in Shanghai"

2019-02-19

On September 18, Zhang Yan, Party Committee Secretary and Chairman of STEC, was invited to be a guest of the large-scale omni-media interview "Being a Guest 2018: Dialogue with Leaders of Shanghai State-owned Enterprises". The interview was titled "Setting out Again to Reform and Open up: Building Brands in the New Journey". Zhang Yan made in-depth discussions on how to adopt new concepts, new ideas, new technologies and new industries and constantly improve the height, depth, width and breadth of "Made in Shanghai" in the field of infrastructure in the studio of Xinhua News Agency, helping the "Shanghai brand" and "Chinese wisdom" shine in the world!

Increasing the height of manufacturing by casting brands and transforming "Shanghai construction" into "Made in Shanghai"
During the interview, Chairman Zhang Yan said that the next step for STEC is to build a better brand, not only "constructing projects" but "manufacturing products", and even creating "Shanghai standards" for infrastructure products and services, so as to enhance the brand value of STEC and the brand connotation of "Made in Shanghai" at a higher level.

"Engineering construction gives buildings and structures to the city, and 'product manufacturing' brings the brand. The brand will be rooted forever in people's hearts," said Chairman Zhang Yan. He said that STEC needs to be changed from "Shanghai construction" to "Made in Shanghai". In the future, STEC will not only extend the focus of attention from the construction end to the service end of the whole lifecycle, so that all infrastructure functions better and better serve the city, but commit to the renewal of the entire construction industry, and transform the "engineering construction" into "industrial manufacturing", which guarantees the quality of products and promotes the continuous improvement of the "Shanghai standards" for products and services at the same time.

He took the representative prefabricated municipal products of STEC as an example. In the past, the construction of an overpass required hundreds of workers to carry out on-site construction. Now, STEC is able to complete all the work in the factory through the pre-production modularized design and the medium-term industrial manufacturing. The pre-embedded digital chip will also provide "traceable" product after-sales tracking to better serve the lifecycle operation management in later stage.

Through the creation of the entire process of technology, management and service standards, STEC introduces the market's optimal resources, thus transforming from "constructing" to "manufacturing". STEC no longer simply constructs, but manufactures products and provides complete products, services and standards to build its brand. In addition, "manufacturing" will also turn migrant workers into industrial workers and give them a stronger sense of belonging to the city. The cost of the entire city and society will also decline accordingly. STEC hopes to provide sufficient support for Shanghai's next urban renewal and construction of an international city of excellence in such a way.

In the future, STEC will further extend the assembly type of technology to more infrastructure areas such as tunnels, roads, bridges and overpasses to export more complete infrastructure products, and provide Shanghai and even cities across the country with "full set of services" of facilities construction and operation with its standards and brand, making the brand of STEC and "Made in Shanghai" known to the country.

This is an ideological transformation from "Shanghai construction" to "Made in Shanghai", an improvement from the perspective of focusing on pure construction to focusing on urban excellence optimization, and a conceptual progress that incorporates the concept of full lifecycle. In fact, in recent years, STEC has been already evolving from a engineering constructor to an integrated service provider of urban infrastructure construction and operation.

Increasing the depth of manufacturing by upgrading technology and creating a lifecycle management service
"The improvement of the city's infrastructure is aimed at using not building," said Zhang Yan, summarizing STEC's new understanding of infrastructure. After 40 years of reform and opening up, the infrastructure of a large number of cities has grown from scratch, and the skeleton network has been basically completed. The next 40 years of urban development is no longer starting from scratch, but from the needs of operations and users to promote a new round of urban renewal.

He took the Yan'an East Road cross-river tunnel as an example. Although the management and maintenance are well-managed, the tunnel still needs be closed and overhauled after a period of operation, which brings many problems to the transportation of Shanghai, a megapolis, and brings many difficulties to the people's travel. How to avoid the problem that big projects must be overhauled after decades? Next month, the first full-lifecycle operation management pilot project in China, Hangzhou Wenyi Road Tunnel, will be officially opened to traffic, which will provide a breakthrough.

In Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Wenyi Road Tunnel, China's first infrastructure "full-lifecycle" operation management pilot project built by STEC with the integrated mode of investment, construction and operation, will be open to traffic next month.

In the Wenyi Road Tunnel, during the planning period of the project, STEC considered how to maximize their efficiency from the needs of the operators and users and from the design lifecycle of at least 20 years or even 100 years.

The Wenyi Road Tunnel has been implanted more than 3,000 intelligent sensing terminals to monitor the settlement, deformation and leakage of water in the civil works, as well as the operation of fans, fire fighting, lighting and drainage in electromechanical system. Through this platform, STEC established "pathological archives" of the entire tunnel at the beginning of project establishment, planning, design and construction, and turned overhaul into repairs and even reduced repairs to daily operations management with the preventive maintenance of "low impact".

STEC has signed a 20-year operation management contract and established a set of evaluation management systems based on big data and BIM + GIS for electromechanical and civil engineering lifecycle. The systems can collect tunnel data in real time during the operation process, monitor tunnel deformation, and provide more refined maintenance services. In the future, it is expected that the new mode of "lifecycle management" will be piloted in the Shanghai Beiheng passage to help Shanghai's more refined urban governance.

Increasing the width of manufacturing by providing multi-dimensional services for a new round of urban renewal
Besides the "whole lifecycle operation management service", the dimension of STEC serving urban renewal and development is also expanding.

STEC is the first enterprise engaged in the research and construction of shield tunnels in China. This year alone, STEC is constructing concurrently five large-diameter tunnels of 14 meters or more, including Shanghai Beiheng, Yanjiang and Zhuguang Road tunnel, Wuhan Sanyang Road tunnel and Zhuhai Maliuzhou tunnel. At present, 14 of the 25 super-large diameter tunnels built around the world are undertaken by STEC.

In addition to constantly challenging the limits of tunnel technology, STEC has also tried to stand at the height of the city's future demand in recent years, providing professional support for a new round of urban renewal. For example, in addition to meeting the basic needs of "cross-river traffic", large-scale tunnel projects have also found new breakthroughs for various types of "diseases" in the city. A typical project is the Tianlin Road under-crossing central-ring tunnel project that solves the problem of "cul-de-sac" on both sides of the central-ring overpass.

In the future, our tunnel shield will not only be larger in diameter but also more complete in function. It will be intelligent, remotely controllable, and even 'unmanned' shield equipment," said Chairman Zhang Yan. He introduced that in 2016, STEC established the “Shanghai Shield Control Center”, combining big data technology with construction experience and controlling the whole process of shield construction through "Internet + big data".

STEC is also the first enterprise group engaged in intelligent transportation research and application in China. It has taken the lead in participating in the overall transportation planning and intelligent transportation construction in Shanghai and dozens of cities in China. From China's first expressway ETC system and high-grade road traffic monitoring system, to the information system of Shanghai Disneyland and the city public safety supervision "one map" system in Shenzhen, STEC has accumulated rich experience in the process of major engineering practice and industry standardization of public transportation digital construction and information management in large and medium-sized cities such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Suzhou, Huai'an and Taizhou, and has become the only domestic enterprise group that has the capabilities of developing "urban, enterprise and project level" digital management platforms for infrastructure.

Increasing the breadth of manufacturing by pushing "Made in Shanghai" to the world
While conducting research on the industry and keeping making innovation internally, STEC is accelerating the pace of expansion externally.

"We want to restart reform and open up. We don't just want to do something small. We want to build tunnels under the Huangpu River, the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, and even under the Thames," said Chairman Zhang Yan. He said that STEC is actively participating in the market competition in Europe and the U.K., and has received positive responses from the U.K.

In the domestic market, STEC will further focus on the national strategy the next step, providing first-class urban infrastructure services for the Yangtze River Delta economic integration, the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the countries and regions along the "Belt and Road".

The success in overseas markets stems from STEC's unique "going out" strategy: STEC is specialized in core business areas such as tunnels and rail transit, and has achieved the ultimate in this field; STEC also pays much attention on the diversity of cultures in the group, foreign workers have accounted for 80% of more than 800 overseas employees; STEC concentrates on safety and integration. Today, STEC is one of the first state-owned enterprises in China to take the initiative to go abroad. Since entering Singapore in 1996, it has not only built 25% of the country's subway lines, but also become the most trusted Chinese company in Singapore. It is the only enterprise that has also won the LTA Contractors Challenge Shield, the highest honor for contractors in Singapore.

At present, STEC is operating in a dozen countries and regions around the world, including India, Malaysia and Russia. Under the "Belt and Road" initiative, STEC has also cooperated with major construction companies, consortia and banks in Europe, Southeast Asia and other regions. It has signed cooperation agreements with Arup of the U.K., Tata of India and Woh Hup of Singapore. Last year, it had moved the headquarters of its entire international business to Singapore.

Chairman Zhang Yan said that STEC is now constantly upgrading and polishing the brand of "Made in Shanghai" with new ideas, new modes and new types of operation, and marching towards the new vision of "the world’s most valuable and creative integrated service provider of city construction and operation". In the future, STEC will go out of Shanghai, radiate its influence across the country, and contribute to the economic and urban development of more countries around the world, so that the brand of "Made in Shanghai" may shine in the world.