Press conference on self-reliance & high-tech innovation used in Beijing Olympic venues

Date: 11:00 a.m., Friday, July 11

Venue: Main Press Center (MPC)

Sun Weide, the host of the press conference

Sun Weide

Ladies and gentlemen and media, today is our 3rd conference in MPC. And this conference is on the self-reliance & high-tech innovation. We are really honored to invite Mr. Yang Weiguang, deputy director of Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission and Mr. Ding Jianming, deputy chief engineer of Beijing '2008' Project Construction Headquarters Office.

Now, I'd like to give floor to the two speakers on self-reliance & high-tech innovation of the construction of Beijing 2008 Olympic venues.

Yang Weiguang, deputy director of Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission (BMSTC)

Yang Weiguang

Dear media friends, good morning. Today I would like to talk about the self-reliance and the high-tech innovation in the construction of Olympic venues. During the construction, the constructors, the research institutes and the universities got a closer cooperation to make a lot of new innovative methods in the construction and achieve great results in a large sum of technologies such as the research and the work processes. It reflects three concepts of 'Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics and People's Olympics'.

Journalists present at the press conference

I'd like to talk about my presentation in the following three aspects. The first is to strengthen the capability of innovation and make masterpiece Olympic construction.

I think that you have gathered a lot of information related to the Olympic constructions. Here I just would like to give the highlights. During the construction, there are three points which focused on the structures, the safety and security issues and the 'Green Olympics' which is the energy conservation Olympics.

All of these steels used in the venues such as the National Stadium (Bird's Nest), the National Swimming Center (Water Cube) and stadiums at Beijing University of Technology (Olympic Badminton) and Peking University (Olympic Table Tennis) amount to 150, 000 tons. So in the construction of these venues, because of the complicated structures, and the feature of large structure, it is very difficult to tackle. So we have used the innovative method to design, make, and test these venues.

We have also formed the whole package of testing, manufacturing and implementing the whole steel structure, because we all know that the safety and security issue of steel structure is very important. I can see that all of these Olympic venues are earthquake resistant and thundering resistance.

Furthermore, I would like to talk about quality of steels used in these Olympic venues. Actually, in the past, we only used some machines to strengthen our steels and this time, we depend on our own technology to research on the strength and resilience skills to be used on Olympic venues.

For the second aspect, I would like to talk about the green energy usage in the construction. First, the use of energy, special use of new and clean and renewable energy. And the new material, we also adopted this new energy saving building materials. Even for the bricks, we also take water absorbing capability of the bricks into consideration. We have made a lot of efforts on the green energy, energy saving and green material.

I would like to release a news that is related to energy saving. After ten days, until the Paralympics, in the Olympic common domain, we all use the energy saving and use of hydrogen and electrical cars. That is, ten days later, the transportation of all the vehicles in the Olympic common domain will realize the goal of zero emission. At this moment the vehicles handover ceremony is now in processing.

The third aspect is the 'People's Olympics', through high-tech innovation. We always focus on people. People come first in our construction. In the planning session, we have implemented internationalized humanistic concept in our planning and designing.

All of the designs have implemented the standard of accessible facilities. And about the construction of these venues and the construction of the supporting facilities, we also focus on the special sports and events.

Our construction does not only meet the requirement of the sports and events, but also consider the comfortableness of the spectators and athletes for watching the Games.

This is the end of my presentation on the Olympic venues constructions and sporting facilities.

Sun Weide

Thank you Mr. Yang. Now let's start the Q & A session. Please tell us where you are from.

Reporter from Economic Daily

Economic Daily

I am from Economic Daily. I have two questions. The first question is about the new standard and patterns used in the construction of the Olympic venues. Do you have some specific data? And what is all the new technology innovation influence on China's future architecture and construction industry? The second, as for the technology and innovation, do you have any innovation on the construction management?

Ding Jianming, deputy chief engineer of Beijing '2008' Project Construction Headquarters Office

Ding Jianming

It's for the new standards and for the patterns that I would like to give a general idea. First of all, the patterns need to be verified. For example, in the steel structures like Mr .Yang has just briefed that there are some highlights. All together, there are 5 effects leading the world onstage and more than 15 technologies leading domestically and reached the advanced level internationally.

For patterns as I have just mentioned, they need to be verified and the verification needs a standard process. As far as I know, for the Olympic projects, because they are just ready for the delivery, my general idea is that this year the patterns have entered the verification processes and have been approved to reach 30 to 50.

For new standards, during the Olympic construction, we have got a lot of new technology and evolved into new standards. According to incomplete statistics, there are altogether 40 new standards have been created. In the future, these new standards can evolve into local standards and the national standards.

NO. 3 is the level of the mobilization of social resources, and how to integrate all these resources and to be used in the construction. I think that incorporating these levels of management skills into a high efficient management system of the construction is a feature for the Olympic projects.

For example, in the steel project, it is coordinated by the government and participated by research institutes, steel enterprises and different stuffs who worked in the designs. In management level, we collect the wisdom of all these talents in the process such as the researching of new process and new standards designing and making in the final stage of the construction of the Bird's Nest and even the unloading. I think this is a typical example to link all the social resources together to make a complicated project.

Reporter from AFP

AFP

China faces a lot of environment problems. The Beijing Olympics in some way tries to address them through its green and high-tech Olympics. We have a lot of cutting-edge technologies. Going to techniques of eco-friendly, can both of you describe how you see these new technologies, perhaps influencing the way China addresses its environmental problems in the future? Will the technology you used in the Olympic venues be world widespread in the future throughout China in its fight against environment problems?

Yang Weiguang

I would like to give one example, the air atmosphere; the air environment attracts a lot of attention from people. The Beijing Municipality has made more than 10 phases of air pollution treatment to clean the air in Beijing. For each phase of the treatment, we have done technology research first to discuss the feasibility of all these basis of treatment. Each provides their suggestions and possibilities for the future Beijing air quality improvement and also for improvement of air quality in other places in China.

August in Beijing, the weather is quite temperate. The weather features high temperate and high humility. For plants, it's difficult for flowers to get blossomed.

During the Olympic time, we need to use a lot of flowers to beautify the environment and it also contributes to the city environment.

And for our feasibility studies after research and development, we have chosen 2,000 types of flowers which will blossom in August. From these 2000 types of flowers, we have chosen 800 flowers which do not need to be watered too much. And finally, we have chosen 560 flowers as the Olympic flowers. More than 20 types of such flowers are used in the Olympic common domain. So we can see that now and in August, Beijing will become the world of flowers.

Ding Jianming

Guided by the three principles and concepts of 'Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics and People's Olympics,' we have created a lot of scientific research in the construction of Olympics projects.

We have made some meaningful examples in the use of new energy and energy saving. For example, in terms of solar photovoltaic power generation, we have incorporated these projects with the construction venues and landscapes. For the photo-thermo technology, it is more widely used, for example, in the Olympic Village during the Games-time, the hot water in the rooms is provided by the photo-thermo technology.

We have also used different types of heat pumps technology. All of these projects give examples in the similar future projects on how to save energy and reduce the impact on the environment.

Second, in the utilization of the water resource, we have done our research and made some good examples.

We all probably know that there is a lake in the Olympic Green. How to maintain the quality of the water in the lake is also highlighted in the Olympic projects.

For the lake, we have used the wetland that belongs to the bio purification technologies and also we have used some artificial purification technologies in the future to maintain good quality of water in the lake. This has also set an example for future projects.

We have also take active roles in the research and the exploration of using the rainfall water especially in Beijing and other cities in China. These cities are all greatly short of water.

And also in the public areas of the projects and the residential areas such as the Olympic Village and Media Village, we have all implemented Beijing standard of energy efficiency. These standards are higher and more stringent than the national standard.