—— A profile of Wang Dongmei, a female employee on the Guangda Railway project of the Third Company of China Railway 21st Bureau Group


       The quality of raw materials is the most direct and important link in ensuring qualified concrete. Each time a new batch of sand and gravel, cement, steel, admixtures, water reducers, and other engineering materials arrives, sampling and testing must be conducted. Qualified materials are allowed for use, and unqualified ones must be resolutely removed from the site. As a site tester, Wang Dongmei must guard the first gate for project quality control. In April 2011, while serving as a testing engineer on Section 24 of the Xishang Expressway, Wang Dongmei was responsible for raw material testing and concrete quality control. At that time, due to the unstable quality of local materials, the concrete mixed at the batching plant exhibited bleeding and segregation. To solve this problem, she used her professional knowledge and combined it with years of practical experience on site. While strengthening raw material testing, she readjusted the concrete mix proportion according to the actual conditions of the raw materials, selected a reasonable sand ratio, reduced the unit water content of the concrete, increased the dosage of water reducer, and controlled a reasonable vibration time. She grasped the rule of "taking no bubbling on the concrete surface after vibration as the limit," effectively solving problems such as excessive surface bubbles and "sand surfaces" on structures caused by concrete quality, ensuring that the concrete quality met construction requirements while effectively saving production costs.

       Tests such as concrete water-cement ratio, slump, and whether segregation occurs allow no room for error, and testers are required to stand by and supervise throughout the entire process. Concrete pouring for some important parts must remain continuous, with no pauses allowed in between. Testers must also supervise and guide throughout the entire process. Sometimes mass concrete pouring requires two days and two nights of continuous construction, and testers must persist until the concrete pouring is completed. For a young woman, this requires not only good physical fitness but also good psychological resilience and a highly responsible attitude toward testing work.

       Wang Dongmei is the kind of person who is very persistent in what she does. No matter how hard or tiring the work, as long as it is her duty, she will see it through to the end and never give up until the goal is achieved. While serving as a testing engineer and deputy director of the laboratory at the Guangda Railway project department, with her selfless work enthusiasm and spirit of enduring hardship, Wang Dongmei was praised many times by project and company leaders, was named an "Outstanding Communist Youth League Member" of the company, and received the title of "Advanced Female Employee" for two consecutive years.

      During construction, she strictly implements relevant standards and regulations for engineering products, strictly controls quality, and requires that every submission she handles be flawless. She does well in the complicated and tedious work of filling out witness sampling forms and commissioning forms, submitting materials for testing, and providing feedback on documents. At the same time, she compiles tracking ledgers for future reference. Because there are many material tests and testing times vary, she completes her work ahead of time to avoid material quality problems or delays in obtaining test reports that could affect on-site construction and project progress.

      Safety and quality concern the credibility and very survival of an enterprise, and project quality control cannot be separated from the dedication and responsibility of testing personnel. It is precisely this responsibility that makes Wang Dongmei never careless and always cautious. Because of her serious and responsible work attitude, and through the efforts of her and all testing personnel, the work of the Guangda laboratory has been recognized and affirmed by project leaders and the owner.

      In October 2015, shortly after the labor competition campaign for "great efforts in the fourth quarter" was launched, leaders and employees were working hard on the construction site almost every day from before dawn until late at night. Wang Dongmei also spent most of her time at the construction site, rushing about all day covered in mud and sweat like a boy. Just then, her family called to tell her that her son had been hospitalized with a high fever and hoped she would return immediately to care for him. However, the labor competition on the site was in full swing, and the tunnel, roadbed, and bridge sites needed testers to supervise every day, while testers were in severe shortage. If Wang Dongmei left her work and rushed home, it would inevitably affect the progress of the great efforts on site. But if she did not return, her husband could not return either because of the great efforts on site. Not only would she be unable to explain to her parents, but her heart-wrenching worry for her son was something she did not know how to relieve.

       Faced with this dilemma, Wang Dongmei cried bitterly and spent more than two hours on the phone explaining to her mother. Her mother understood her child and also understood the nature of the children's work, and ultimately agreed that they could visit during the New Year. Thus, the next day, with red and swollen eyes, Wang Dongmei went to the construction site to stand by again.

       Greatness comes from the ordinary. Over the past 15 years, Comrade Wang Dongmei has silently dedicated her youth to a grassroots testing position and upheld her belief: as long as you do it with your heart, you can achieve excellent results in any position. Over the past 15 years, she has dedicated her youth bit by bit to the development of the project and the enterprise through practical actions. In her testing position, she has always maintained a rigorous, pragmatic, and innovative spirit, and with the fullest mental state and work enthusiasm, devoted herself to on-site testing, composing a song of selfless dedication by a post-80s female worker.
 Wang DongmeiWang Dong Wang Dongmei conducting a soil test.JPG Wang Zhong