On November 18, 2020, the first lot of the first extension line of the Sri Lanka Southern Expressway, which was built by AVIC International Engineering Company, officially received the project performance certificate. From the signing, preparation and launch of the project, during which the local floods, government changes, terrorist attacks were experienced, and the opening ceremony was held at the end of February when the new crown pneumonia epidemic had not yet invaded Sri Lanka. Now, the issuance of the performance certificate has finally brought the "Belt and Road" project with a contract amount of more than 800 million US dollars to a successful conclusion.
Most of the Chinese managers of the "Nangao" project in Sri Lanka are "post-80s" and "post-90s", and Lu Kai, deputy project manager, is one of them. As a "post-85", he speaks clearly and logically, and his years of overseas work experience have given him a maturity and stability that surpasses his peers.
As the soul of the project measurement plan team, Lu Kai has led his team to "repeated defeats, repeated defeats and battles" in the past 8 years, thousands of hammers, but like "small strong who can't die", to achieve counterattack, winning reputation and benefits for the project.
Unfavorable reversal breakout
“the contractor entitled to an additional payment with overhead and profit per cubic meter of concrete in structural element.
As a result of the increase in concrete designation, the contractor is entitled to additional costs and corresponding management fees and profit | for each cubic meter of concrete structural elements it implements. ”
This quote is from the Colombo Arbitration Centre's award on 30 October 2017. It is for this ruling that Lu Kai and his team have struggled for more than 5 months.
Dating back to May 19, 2017, the "Nangao" project established the "Dispute Adjudication Committee" (abbreviated as DAB).
Once the dab was established, Lu Kai began to lead everyone to carefully screen the incident and analyze the data, and on this basis, the "supervision required the NGO project to increase the concrete label" as the first dispute event to report the DAB. Lu Kai led the metrology team to grasp the key points of the problem of "improving the concrete marking", consulted and studied the technical standards of many countries, and collected information from many aspects such as American standards, British standards and the internal relationship between them.
On July 17, 2017, "Nangao" submitted a claim report to the owner and required that the concrete that occurred on the subsequent site should be continuously claimed.
A month after the report was submitted, Lu Kai waited for a reply from the owner who refused to claim. The news dealt a heavy blow to Lu Kai's entire team as the company would face losses of several hundred million rupees.
Is the two-month effort going to end in failure? Lu Kai asked himself repeatedly. After regaining his mood, he began to encourage everyone again.
He told his team colleagues: "We've heard a lot of cases of desperate reversals, most of which say the same thing – the chance of a reversal comes from stability from start to finish. This perseverance is our belief. ”
Because of the unremitting belief, everyone gathered together again, adjusted their thinking, patiently analyzed, and combined with the design department and the engineering department to collect technical information, and at the same time fully mobilized the initiative of the project partners, rejected the owner's views one by one, and submitted the claim statement report again two months later.
A month later, NGC hosted its first hearing on a dispute ruling at the Colombo Arbitration Centre. The owner, the supervisor, the "Nangao" project department and the members of the DAB all attended the meeting, at which the two sides exchanged words and swords on their respective views, the owner still denied the claim, and Lu Kai led the "Nangao" team to fight back according to reason, gradually dominating the rhythm of the entire hearing.
On October 30 of the same year, the "Nangao" project department received a dispute ruling, and they won!
This is one of the milestones that can be written into the history of "Nangao" and the first successful case of dab claims.
After this battle, Lu Kai led his team to become more and more courageous, and then won many classic victories such as "exchange rate loss defense war", "pipe pile victory", "quality guarantee gold game", etc., and only the advance payment deduction saved 39.75 million yuan for the engineering company, and continuously created value for the company.
In 2020, Lu Kai won the title of "Outstanding Employee" of AVIC International, and in the interview, he asked him to summarize his work style in 4 words, and he slightly moaned: "When safeguarding the interests of the company, I hope that I will always be 'brave and fearless'." ”
When recalling this "glorious years", he said that it is precisely in the negotiation to sum up experience and grasp the key points that can lead the team to exert synergy and repeatedly reverse. "Even if we are often in adversity, we must always be full of energy. Shouldering responsibilities and competing for tasks is the pursuit of 'Nangao people' and the spiritual portrayal of overseas engineers in the aviation industry. ”
"The achievements of the Southern Expressway Project Department today are the result of the collective efforts of the project team, the game with the owners, is the process of winning the respect and trust of the other party with our professional attitude, we want to let the whole Sri Lanka see that we not only have Chinese speed, but also Chinese quality."
Bittersweet years Pain and warmth accompany
Since the first time he went abroad in 2011 and chose to devote himself to overseas engineering, this prosperous "post-85" has now been rooted in Sri Lanka for 9 years and has become an "old overseas".
In the 2019 May Fourth Youth Day to the "Old Overseas" draft launched by AVIC International, Lu Kai wrote when looking back at the experience of staying abroad: "Time is like a file, it grinds away the edges and corners of youth and madness, and sharpens the calm and firmness of the face; it files off your pride, but forges your pride." ”
Time difference and distance are always torn back and forth between the work and life of overseas engineers. In addition to the tense and busy, perseverance and responsibility in the resident time, it is always accompanied by regrets and sudden accidents in life.
In September 2013, the Southern Expressway project has started the internal part of the package bidding work, Lu Kai is also in charge of another highway project, the distance between the two projects is 200 kilometers, for nearly 2 years he has taken care of both projects, for 8 consecutive years of the Spring Festival spent with colleagues on the other side of the ocean.
During the two projects, Lu Kai was recruited by "dengue fever", and the high fever was difficult to retreat at the onset of the disease, accompanied by severe soreness in the muscles and joints, but Lu Kai ridiculed this experience as a "submission form" for himself.
In the face of illness, he talked and laughed, but when facing his family, Lu Kai could only say "indebted".
At the beginning of 2017, when the game of the advance payment deduction plan reached a critical stage, Lu Kai's wife was waiting for delivery in China at the time, looking forward to the birth of a small life. Because Lu Kai wanted to wait for the dust of the "advance payment" incident to settle and then return to China on vacation, the date of the return ticket that he had repeatedly booked was only 3 days earlier than his wife's due date. Who expected that there was a coincidence that the daughter was born a week in advance, but Lu Kai had not yet returned to China, missing the first side of her daughter's arrival in the world.
Although at the negotiating table, Lu Kai can often talk about the group of Confucians, known as "talking and laughing between the trees and the ashes of the ashes", but whenever he talks about his regretful experience, he always has few words.
In the company's internal essay, Lu Kai wrote: "Looking back on the many years of staying abroad, my heart is full of gratitude. Thanks to my parents and daughters-in-law for their efforts, working overseas for a long time, I don't have much time to accompany you, and I have always felt indebted in my heart... Thanks to the company, providing a high-quality platform, I have the opportunity to build one quality project after another in this beautiful country, and compose a chapter of friendship between the two countries! These years of experience will surely be the shining point in my life. Looking forward, with gratitude, I am still determined to move forward, vowing to be a young man of the times who is proud of the world! ”