MiTAC proud of Circular Line construction quality
On August 10, Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-Je inspected the first phase construction of Taipei Metro Circular Line and Shisizhang Station. MiTAC as one of the subcontractors of electro-mechanical system is in charge of electricity, communication, central monitoring, and automatic fare collection system deployment. MITAC Information Technology Corp. chairman, Liang Su, Vice President of Special Business Group, Jackie Lee, and the construction team all participated in the inspection. Mayor Ko expressed his appreciation to all the team members, and stressed that he was pleased to see the high quality of Circular Line Construction progress. MiTAC is very grateful of the recognition from Mayor Ko and delighted to share this honor with our employees and customers.
ANSALDO submitted the lowest bid of the first phase construction project of Taipei Metro Circular Line, and was awarded the contract with a narrow victory over BOMBARDIER on March 2, 2009. MiTAC’s Vice President of Special Business Group, Jackie Lee indicated that ANSALDO is a global company focusing on railway signaling, integrated transport systems for passenger traffic and freight operations, mainly in European market. After Hitachi Rail Italy Investments acquired most shares of ANSALDO in 2015, ANSALDO has gradually stepped into Asian market.
MiTAC and ANSALDO cooperate to enter markets in developing countries
Jackie Lee pointed out that ANSALDO had been longing for entering the market for metro in Taiwan but lack of local partnership. MiTAC has demonstrated great performance in automatic fare collection, electricity, communication, traffic control, environmental control system of Taipei MRT, and thus drawn ANSALDO’s attention.
MiTAC and ANSALDO started to cooperate to win the procurement contracts. The winning of Circular Line bid has enhanced confidence in both sides, and fostered ongoing cooperation in the procurement for electro-mechanical system of Sanying Line. The cooperation between MiTAC and ANSALDO is expected to expand to the Southeast Asian countries.
The building engineering work of Circular Line in first phase construction started in 2011, covering a length of 15.4km from Dapinglin station (Xindian Line) to New Taipei Industrial Park station. The Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation (TRTC), which responsible for the construction said that the Circular Line construction is a difficult endeavor. It includes underground stations, shield tunnels, cross river rails, and double-deck rails which was first seen in Taiwan. Its complexity and versatility require the whole pack of metro building techniques and technologies.
The more complicated the building engineering work appears, the more it influences the process of electro-mechanical construction. Lee explained that electro-mechanical construction consists of six subsystems including electric multiple units (EMU), power (PWR), operation control system (OCS), communication (COM), depot and automatic fare collection (AFC). We started the deployment with the bulk supply substations (BSS) completed in March, 2016, for BSS is in charge of electricity needed by all the system testing, operation and maintenance, like the heart of the Circular Line.
Following the completion of BSS, the construction was proceeded with the establishment of testing rails, power substations and facility power substations. When EMUs arrived at the port of Taipei and train preparation was carried out, track grinding, testing adjustment, interface integration would be the next work to do. All the work was scheduled to be completed approximately over one year in order not to delay the construction. Lee emphasize that MiTAC’s team had to do the work during the off-peak metro hours at night, and it is such a physically and mentally demanding. “During the Mayor Ko’s inspection, the Electrical & Mechanical Project officer in the Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) of Taipei City government came to say thanks to me and the MiTAC team for sparing no effort to meet the construction schedule.” MITAC and Information Technology Corp. chairman, Liang Su said.
“Before the official operation of Circular Line begin, MiTAC and ANSALDO still have lots of testing work to do.” Lee said ”We are confident to deliver high-quality metro system on time.”
