Recently, all 304 cast-in-place piles for the first-phase tanks of the Wuhan Baihushan LNG Storage and Distribution Base (reservoir area project) completed construction and pile foundation testing. All pile foundation quality tests passed, with Class I piles accounting for 99%, marking the high-quality completion of the project's tank pile foundation works. Since the first pile was drilled on May 21, the project has overcome adverse factors such as the plum rain season and multiple construction challenges including complex geology, successfully achieving a milestone node and delivering a remarkable interim result for implementing the "Gasifying the Yangtze" strategy and strengthening the foundation of natural gas supply security in Central China.

The Wuhan Baihushan LNG Storage and Distribution Base project is a core energy infrastructure project in the 14th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development of Hubei Province. It is a livelihood project deployed by Wuhan Chengtou Energy Group to build gas storage and peak-shaving capacity in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, safeguard residential gas use in the Wuhan metropolitan area, and promote green and low-carbon transformation of regional energy. The project is planned to have a total gas storage capacity of 216 million cubic meters and a daily emergency peak-shaving capacity of 7.2 million cubic meters. Once completed, it will become a leading natural gas storage hub in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, with great significance for enhancing regional energy security resilience and supporting green industrial development. The completed tank pile foundations serve as the core load-bearing foundation of the LNG tanks, involving high construction technical thresholds and strict professional control requirements. The completion of the entire pile line has cleared a key prerequisite for the project's main construction and laid a solid civil engineering foundation for the project's on-schedule completion and commissioning.

A total of 304 cast-in-place piles were installed in this pile foundation project, with the maximum pile length difference exceeding 30 meters. The site is densely distributed with geological fracture zones and complex soil structures, making precision control extremely difficult throughout the entire process of hole formation, wall protection, and concrete pouring. Coupled with external adverse conditions such as continuous heavy rainfall during Wuhan's plum rain season, waterlogged and muddy sites, and blocked road access, these multiple challenges greatly increased pressure on construction organization and process control.

To solve the dual technical and environmental challenges, Hubei Minsheng Company (hereinafter referred to as "Hubei Minsheng Company") under Nengchu Investment Company of Wuhan Chengtou Energy Group took the lead in organizing all participating units to strengthen advance technical planning, prepare a special construction plan for pile foundations during the rainy season, dynamically optimize the drilling, hole cleaning, and pouring process flows, and carry out multi-point parallel operations to seize favorable weather windows. For core indicators such as verticality of ultra-long piles, pile integrity, and concrete compactness, targeted process control measures were implemented to strictly control key factors including hole depth, mud parameters, and pouring continuity throughout the process, eliminating quality defects such as broken piles and necking, and safeguarding tank safety with excellent foundation engineering quality.

The Wuhan Baihushan LNG Storage and Distribution Base project has consistently adhered to the construction principle of "quality first, source control" and fully implemented a four-level quality assurance system of "owner overall control + PMC process supervision + supervisor full-time on-site supervision + EPC main responsibility implementation," building a closed-loop quality control system with layer-by-layer checks and full traceability.

Hubei Minsheng Company took the lead in formulating the overall quality control guidelines for pile foundations, clarifying the list of quality rights and responsibilities of all participating units, and establishing a joint acceptance mechanism for processes. All concealed works and key processes must pass four-party joint verification before proceeding to the next stage. PMC carried out in-depth full-process supervision, dispatching professional technical teams on site to conduct technical review and dynamic correction of construction plans, raw material entry, and the entire hole formation and pouring process. Supervisors provided round-the-clock on-site supervision, assigning dedicated personnel to monitor core processes such as reinforcement cage installation, concrete pouring, and pile curing, recording construction parameters in real time, and immediately stopping work for rectification when problems were found. The EPC general contractor fulfilled its main responsibility by establishing a dual self-inspection mechanism of team self-inspection and project department re-inspection, exercising independent control over the entire process from raw material entry testing and on-site process execution to finished product curing. The four-level system worked in the same direction with checkpoints moved forward, embedding standardized management into every pile foundation construction process, enabling early identification and early handling of quality risks, and ensuring that engineering construction standards were implemented through systematic management.

Facing multiple challenges of a tight schedule, poor geology, and high rainy-season risks, Hubei Minsheng Company fully leveraged its role as owner coordinator, efficiently linking EPC, supervision, construction, and PMC units to form an engineering control task force and pool multi-party efforts for coordinated攻坚.

The Wuhan Baihushan LNG Storage and Distribution Base project established a closed-loop promotion mechanism of "daily scheduling, weekly review, monthly assessment," coordinating and resolving construction bottlenecks on site every day, reviewing schedule deviations and optimizing resource allocation every week, and conducting comprehensive monthly assessments of schedule, safety, and quality to ensure responsibility implementation. For on-site control, a 24-hour full-time operation and duty model was implemented. The leadership team of Hubei Minsheng Company took shifts on site to supervise, and management personnel from participating units such as Wuhan Gas Engineering Company under Wuhan Chengtou Yucheng Qianli were also on duty simultaneously, achieving full coverage control of quality, safety, and schedule. At the same time, flood control and construction proceeded in parallel. A flood-season safety responsibility system covering all participating units was established, and regular dragnet-style hazard inspections were carried out in pile operation areas, temporary power use, and slope drainage. Drainage networks in the site were dredged in advance, flood control materials such as water pumps, sandbags, and emergency generators were fully equipped, and a 24-hour duty patrol, real-time monitoring, and scheduled reporting system was implemented.

The successful completion of the tank pile foundation works is a new starting point for the construction of the Wuhan Baihushan LNG Storage and Distribution Base project. Next, under the overall deployment of Wuhan Chengtou Energy Group, the participating units will continue to deepen integrated control of safety, quality, schedule, and investment throughout the entire process, steadily advance subsequent civil construction such as tank pile caps and tank main structures, continue to unite all participating units to work with dedication and strive for excellence, optimize green construction and smart construction measures, and make every effort to build an intelligent, information-based, and low-carbon regional LNG storage benchmark project. They will earnestly shoulder the responsibility of state-owned enterprises in energy supply security and serving livelihood development, and contribute Chengtou strength to implementing the national "Gasifying the Yangtze" strategy, ensuring stable natural gas supply in Central China, and supporting Hubei's efforts to build an important strategic fulcrum for the rise of the central region.

Source: Wuhan Chengtou