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Dhaka : Segmental girder erection works of Viaduct-2 of Padma Bridge Rail Link Project (PBRLP) have been completed 51 days ahead of the program with the placement of the last span of box girder on piers M01 and PN1 on May 04, 2021. Railways Minister Md. Nurul Islam Sujan, Director General of Bangladesh Railway Engr. D.N Mazumber, Additional Secretary of Bangladesh Railway and Project Director of PBRLP Engr. Golam Fakhruddin A. Chowdhury, the Chief Coordinator Officer (CCO) of the international consultant consortium Major General Zahid, together with the Project Director of China Railway Group Limited (CREC) Wang Kun, witnessed the steady placement of the last span.
Viaduct-2 of PBRLP, with a total length of 2589.2m, is a simply-supported segmental box girder viaduct with 65 spans, 4 spans×34m and 61 spans×38m. There are a total of 776 segments. Based on nearly 20 years of bridge construction experience of CREC in Bangladesh, and according to the special environmental and geological conditions of Bangladesh, the designers of China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group CO. LTD (CREEC) and the technical experts of China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd. (MBEC) have adhered to technical innovation and resolved issues of bored pile construction by adopting bentonite slurry and polymer slurry to stabilize boreholes in thick super-silty fine-sand strata, overcoming the difficulties of pile design and construction. Three large-scale modernized box girder precast yards have been established. The whole erection process adopts concrete box girder prefabrication and assembly, which ensures the firm structure and aesthetics of the segments, laying a solid foundation for rapid construction.
For the last 20 years in Bangladesh, CREC has always stayed with the Bangladesh people, hand in hand and heart to heart. In the face of the once-in-a-century pandemic, Bangladesh in particular, which has been severely hit, has seen a continuous surge in confirmed cases for more than a year, and the total infections have exceeded 700,000. CREC Project Management Office has implemented targeted policies and taken regular epidemic prevention measures. CREC prioritized both epidemic prevention and construction activities to ensure zero infection among its nearly a thousand Chinese staff and established campsites for nearly five thousand local staff, offering free medical and living, so as to create conditions for the fight against the virus and provide solutions to the effects of the pandemic on the construction progress.
As an important project under the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) and the biggest infrastructure project under construction of the Bangladesh government, the project is funded by preferential loans of Exim Bank of China, which is also the largest single contract amount financed by Two Preferential Loan Program of the Chinese government in the recent years. The governments of both China and Bangladesh have given enormous support and attention to it, and the Bangladesh government included it in the top ten first-track projects.
Railways Minister Md. Nurul Islam Sujan said on the occasion, “The works of station building at Mawa, Bhanga, Shibchar and Janjira are progressing. Out of these, Bhanga will be a junction station and connect 4 destinations through this rail line. We will turn it into an iconic station by making some changes in the existing plan. I also want to thank our construction partner CREC as they are completing the works with utmost cordiality. We are satisfied with their progress despite the pandemic and today I am handing over an appreciation letter from Railway Ministry.”
The Contractor Representative Wang Kun said, “As an eternal pioneer, CREC has been through many hardships including a one-and-a-half-year delay caused due to land acquisition, design approval and delayed measurement and payment in the initial stage of the project, combined with the pandemic and 70-year flood in 2020. From the piling works to the full implementation of box girder erection work since April 30, 2020, the effective time for construction of the whole viaduct is only one and a half years. Within a few weeks, except for the span which is affected by the PMBP, the last span of Viaduct-3 will also be completed. CREC has created a new Chinese speed record for the construction of bridge in Bangladesh. In June, the works prior to the track-laying of the Mawa-Bhanga section of PBRLP will be almost completed, and the track-laying works are about to start. If this goal can be achieved, it means within an effective working period of 2.5 years, a new rail line is built and opened to traffic. This will be a historic achievement and is seldom seen all over the world except in China.”
Government of Bangladesh has set the target of Day 1, namely, to open the Padma Bridge and the priority section of PBRLP on the same day. As per Mr. Wang Kun of CREC, achieving this goal of Day 1 will depend on the progress of construction of stations and signaling works, availability of quick decision-making and effective support from Bangladesh Railway and the Consultant to the Contractor, and the timely solutions to the issues related to delayed measurement and payment.
