At 9:16 on May 30, the first pile of the main pier of the Hannan Yangtze River Bridge on the Wuhan Metropolitan Area Ring Expressway was drilled, marking the official start of the project's full-scale foundation construction.

The Hannan Yangtze River Bridge has a total length of 2.894 km. It is a two-tower, single-span steel box stiffening girder suspension bridge with a main span of 1,600 m, and is a key control project for the entire line. The pile foundation of the No. 12 main tower pier consists of 72 bored cast-in-place piles with a diameter of 2.5 m and a length of 98 m.

Because the pier is close to the main channel of the Yangtze River, the drilling must pass through a permeable sand layer more than 40 m thick. In the face of complex geological conditions and the high risk to hole-forming quality, after pile formation the project adopted distributed grouting technology for post-grouting at the pile tip and around the pile to improve the bearing capacity of the pile foundation.

To build a safe and century-quality project, the project management team of China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group, based on summarizing the results of trial piles, carefully prepared the "first piece" construction plan for the pile foundation and made thorough preparations in terms of resources to ensure high-quality and efficient completion of pile foundation construction.

The Hannan Yangtze River Bridge and its connecting project on the Wuhan Metropolitan Area Ring Expressway start at the Tonghang Industrial Park in Caidian District, pass through Caidian and Hannan, cross the Wuhan–Jianli Expressway, cross the river and then pass through Paizhouwan Town and Panjiawan in Jiayu County, cross over the Wuhan–Shenzhen Expressway, and end on the south side of Shanpo Street in Jiangxia District. The total length is 71 km, with a design speed of 120 km/h. The construction of the Wuhan Metropolitan Area Ring Expressway will provide strong transportation support for the integrated development of the Greater Wuhan metropolitan area.