Recently, all construction and pile foundation testing of the 304 cast-in-place piles for the Phase I storage tanks of the Wuhan Baihushan LNG Storage and Distribution Base (tank farm works) were completed. All pile foundation quality tests passed, with Class I piles accounting for 99%, marking a high-quality conclusion to 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 consolidating the foundation for 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 of Wuhan Urban Construction Investment Energy Group for deploying gas storage and peak-shaving in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, safeguarding residential gas use in the Wuhan metropolitan area, and promoting green and low-carbon energy transition in the region. The project is planned with 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, of great significance for enhancing regional energy security resilience and supporting green industrial development. The completed tank pile foundations, as the core load-bearing foundation of the LNG tanks, involve high technical thresholds and strict professional control requirements. Their full completion opens up the key prerequisite link for the project's main construction and lays a solid civil engineering foundation for on-schedule completion and commissioning.

A total of 304 cast-in-place piles were installed in this pile foundation project, with a maximum pile length variation exceeding 30 meters. The site is densely distributed with fractured geological 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 the pressure on construction organization and process control.

To overcome the dual technical and environmental challenges, Hubei Minsheng Company (hereinafter referred to as "Hubei Minsheng Company") under Nengchu Investment Company of Wuhan Urban Construction Investment Energy Group led 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 the verticality of ultra-long piles, pile integrity, and concrete compactness, supporting special 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 consolidating the safety bottom line of the tanks 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," fully implementing a four-level quality assurance system of "owner overall coordination and control + PMC process supervision + supervisor full-time on-site witnessing + EPC main body 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 general outline for pile foundation quality control, clarifying the quality responsibility list of each participating unit, 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 conducts in-depth full-process supervision, dispatching professional technical teams on site to carry out technical review and dynamic correction of construction plans, raw material entry, and the entire hole-forming and pouring process. Supervisors provide round-the-clock on-site witnessing, with dedicated personnel monitoring core processes such as rebar cage installation, concrete pouring, and pile curing, recording construction parameters in real time, and immediately stopping work for rectification when problems are found. The EPC general contractor fulfills 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 works in the same direction with checkpoints moved forward, embedding standardized management into every process of pile foundation construction, achieving early identification and early handling of quality risks, and ensuring the implementation of engineering construction standards 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 collaborative problem-solving.

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 mode was implemented. The leadership team of Hubei Minsheng Company took shifts stationed on site to supervise, while management personnel from participating units such as Wuhan Gas Engineering Company under Wuhan Urban Construction Investment Yucheng Qianli were on duty simultaneously, achieving full coverage control of quality, safety, and schedule. Meanwhile, flood control and construction proceeded in parallel, with a flood-season safety responsibility system covering all participating units established, and regular dragnet-style hazard inspections of pile operation areas, temporary power use, and slope drainage carried out. Site drainage networks 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 Urban Construction Investment Energy Group, the participating units will continue to deepen integrated whole-process control of safety, quality, schedule, and investment, and steadily advance subsequent civil works such as tank pile caps and tank main structures. They will continue to coordinate all participating units to unite efforts 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, earnestly shouldering the responsibility of state-owned enterprises for energy supply security and serving livelihood development, and contributing urban construction investment strength to implementing the national "Gasifying the Yangtze" strategy, ensuring stable natural gas supply in Central China, and supporting Hubei's construction as an important strategic fulcrum for the rise of the central region.

Source: Wuhan Urban Construction Investment