On 11 March, 120 construction and engineering students from Norway visited the maxit plant in Beijing and gained an insight into several interesting building projects.The visit of 120 Norwegian students of the NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) in Trondheim was an excellent opportunity for maxit China to arrange an exciting “European Engineer Day” in the capital of the Olympic Nation.

The idea was to afford the students an insight in some spectacular ongoing building projects and to show them the manufacturing process in the maxit plant in Chan Ping (40km northwest of Beijing). In the early morning, three busses with students, their professors and maxit employees (Alex Wu, Wu Yinshuo, Zhang Li, Wang Tong, Andreas Strauss, Caroline Strohm), left to the Beijing South Railway StationThis Station is a 220,000 m² large project, started to be build up in the end of 2006. It will be totally finalized in 2009. During an over one hour round tour the students got an impressive introduction by the responsible Engineers Mr. Wang Fei and Mr. Fang Lian. After its opening the station will be used by 300.000 travelers every day. 30 platforms will be built up, four of them for high speed trains called “bullet-train”. These trains can reach a high speed of approx 300 km/h. 15.000 m² shopping area, 111 elevators and a direct connection to the excellent subway network are only a few of the highlights. At the moment 6.000 workers and 200 Engineers are doing their best to finish in time.
After visiting the railway station the tour went on towards the maxit plant. On the way to the plant the Olympia area passed by, to show some architectural masterpieces and coeval very special reference objects of maxit i.e. the National Stadium nicknamed “Bird nest” (built up with several thousand tons of maxit masonry mortar). Into the following projects maxit delivered different kinds of the high quality maxit floors: The National Indoor Stadium (National Gymnasium), the Olympic Basketball Gymnasium and the Olympic Village. In total approx 115.000 m² of maxit material has been applied by our own application teams in record-breaking time.
The lunch break was organized in a traditional Chinese restaurant with several different kinds of wonderful tasty food. Strengthened with Chinese gourmet food the tour went on to the maxit plant where the Norwegian visitors had a look on the modern manufacturing process. They got an introduction into all kinds of maxit building materials. At the so called “maxit great wall” they were introduced into the magic world of energy saving with maxit ETIC systems.In the afternoon the new Terminal 3 of Beijing Capital Airport (designed by Sir Norman Foster) was on program; a huge project where we delivered maxit floor 4615 for the 210.000 m² huge parking area. This area was finalized in 2007 during 40 days.

Together from the reactions of the students and the professors the day was a complete success. The event left a lasting impression on the Norwegian visitors and for sure when they are back in their beautiful home country they will for sure remember this impressive day.Special thanks for the good organization to Mrs. Zhang Yan who arranged the visit in the railway station.

In case of any further questions please contact the author Caroline Strohm direct via email: strohmc@ba-loerrach.de.