As part of the Hongqiao transportation hub master plan to alleviate traffic congestion in Shanghai’s western highway network the city invested 36km of new roads in the new Jiamin highway section. This new highway section runs through dense urban areas and posed unique construction challenges.
 
For the Jiamin Highway’ s JBM 2-4 section Shanghai Construction Group pioneered a precast construction method. This method previously unheard of in China eliminates onsite construction of road and bridge sections and reduces the impact of the construction project to residents to an absolute minimum.
 
Shanghai Highway Investments Dr. Jiang explained: “We specified prefabrication technology for all aspects of the construction of this project. The elevated highways superstructure and substructure piles and pile caps columns beams and box beams were all factory prefabricated and assembled on site. We moved the construction site from the city into the factory and greatly reduced the impact on the existing transport situation and residents. In comparison to traditional in-situ building methods this prefabricated design also significantly saved energy reduced the project’s environmental impact and was quicker to complete.”
 
Permanent steel casings were identified as the foundation type best complementing this projects pre-cast philosophy. Shanghai ICE’s resonance free vibratory hammers were selected as the best installation method. Steel casing foundation piles can be driven to depth quickly reducing construction time and decreasing the impact on the surrounding residents.
 
As part of the highway project a trestle bridge needed to be built. With the experience freshly gained from building the elevated highways foundations the city decided that for this project a vibratory hammer and temporary casing foundation should be used. For this project 39m long casings with a diameter of 800-1000mm had to be driven into the river bed. An ICE 815C was selected for this job and drove each pile to depth in roughly fifteen minutes each. This was the contractors first time using a vibratory hammer and the initial trepidation of using this “expensive” new construction method quickly gave way when it became clear the efficiency was much greater than expected and total project cost was down.
 
Since entering the Chinese market 2011 the ICE China team not only worked tirelessly to introduce new equipment but put in great effort to promote new construction methods using vibratory hammers. ICE’s technology addresses pressing concerns about foundation works environmental impact while also bringing economic benefits to our users. Shanghai ICE’s vision is to launch green foundations all over China. The Shanghai Construction Group’s Jiamin JMB2-4 project has shown the vision come full circle!