Feature: Chinese safety engineers meticulously oversee erection of iconic tower in Egypt

CAIRO, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- When the first ray of sunshine shone on the tallest building in Africa located here, Chinese engineer Yan Yueping started a busy day of security inspections at the construction site.

Yan, 26, is a safety engineer for the Egypt Branch of China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC Egypt), which is building a 385-meter-tall landmark tower in the Central Business District (CBD) of Egypt's new administrative capital.

The tower is part of the CBD project which covers an area of about 505,000 square meters, with 20 commercial and residential skyscrapers as well as supporting municipal infrastructure.

Yan has been in the project for more than a year and witnessed many key moments in the process of erecting the iconic tower in the desert.

As a safety engineer, Yan's responsibility is to examine both the inside and outside of the tower to ensure that it "rises and grows" safely.

Every day, from the podiums to the tower, the young engineer walks nearly 20,000 steps to every corner of the construction site, carefully inspecting high-altitude operations, large-scale equipment and fire control systems to correct irregular operations and eliminate potential safety hazards.

"Safety first is not a slogan. Safety work is a line of defense and a guarantee of the smooth operation of the entire construction site," Yan told Xinhua while inspecting the site.

On the boom tower crane, which is higher than the tower crown, he climbed the balance arm of the tower crane to check the wire rope, instructing the workers to use the fall arrester correctly. On each construction floor, he checked the safety measures one by one.

"Ensuring zero accidents and zero casualties on construction sites is the red line for safe work," Yan said.

At present, the construction of the main structure of all the 20 buildings of the CBD project has been completed, and decoration and electromechanical installation work has begun.

"For such a super high-rise building, the construction of the curtain wall is mostly high-altitude and side-by-side operations. A special rectification and inspection team has been established for the project," said Wang Xiaolong, project manager of the curtain wall of the iconic tower.

In order to ensure safety during the curtain wall construction, workers are organized to conduct morning shift safety education at 5:30 every morning and special safety inspections are carried out every week for rectification and implementation, he said.

"Behavioral safety star award activities are carried out at least once a month to boost the workers' enthusiasm about self-safety protection and improve their safety awareness," Wang noted.

The iconic tower project involves interdisciplinary joint operations, which require safety workers to understand various fields such as civil engineering, steel structure, and interior and exterior decoration so as to better carry out safety management work.

Yan remembered very well that when he first joined the project in January 2021, he was quite overwhelmed as it was the first time for him to face such a complex project.

At that time, the tower's main steel structure was undergoing intensive construction, and handling the new mechanical equipment and other technical issues was very challenging.

However, Yan did not get discouraged. He turned pressure into motivation and forced himself to learn.

With the encouragement and help of Zhao Jinlong, the project safety director, Yan rose to the challenge and has grown to become a pillar of the safety management of the iconic tower project.

"As long as the project is not completed, the inspections will not stop. This is my sense of mission," Yan said.