CSCEC Egypt New Capital CBD Project, P3 Junyuan Li

With the rapid development of Egypt's internationalization, more and more Chinese companies have come here to seek more development opportunities, and at the same time have brought more jobs to Egypt. Cao, a mason from the P3 Package of the Egyptian new capital CBD project constructed by CSCEC, revealed his "secret" by his actions: "Take the 'heart' to the Egyptian workers, and what you will receive is their 'heart'! "

The real name of " Careful Master" is Cao Longxin, a native of Hefei City, Anhui Province of China. Now he is working in the P3 Package of the new capital CBD project in Egypt as a mason who has 7-year oversea working experience. Because of his gentle and considerate personality, neat working style and named as Cao, he is called the "Careful Master" affectionately by the Chinese workers around.



Egypt new capital CBD project started one and a half years ago. A series of methods in the P3 Package, such as employing local labors, leading team by foreman, and “master-apprentice bond”, have been applied in the project with good effect. As the other packages start to employee more local labors, the trend of lacking employees in the CBD project gradually appeared. They had courage to be the first package to set up two recruitment points in Aswan province of southern Egypt and Osem town of Cairo, and explored the one-stop model for localized employment including recruitment, training and induction.

In the early morning of July 17, the first 10 new labors recruited from Aswan Province were assigned to the construction site after a simple training. Ahmed and two fellows were assigned to a group and became the apprentices of Cao.

On the other hand, Cao was not happy with the three new Egyptian apprentices. Because he had inquired privately that Aswan is located in the southern part of Egypt where education is not development and many local people have not attended school. Therefore, the communication between them may be very difficult, which made the Master Cao, who has never been worried about cooperating with foreigners, in anxiety. In addition, the team lead by Cao already has 15 Egyptian apprentices who are very acquainted with each other and they can understand each other just by one sentence, an action, or even a look. This made the team of "Careful Master" become the best team with the fastest working, best quality, and highest wages among the same type of work. Sometimes their higher wages will even be envied by other teams, which made his team become the goal to chase by other teams. However, with the attendance of new apprentices, "Careful Master" have to pay some effort to teach them, which will delay a lot of time undoubtedly and affect the work progress of his team. Therefore, Master Cao did not want to lead these new apprentices. When the project manager listened to the reason of Cao, he rejected Cao’s requirement directly. Therefore, Cao had no choice but to accept the three new apprentices.



Fortunately, Ahmed and his fellows were willing to learn and worked very hard on the site. After a week of working, the three labors were initially approved by Cao for their hard-working and studious attitude. Cao also accepted the three new apprentices from the heart, and started to teach them the skill of concrete casting step by step. Then the amazing result appeared. Originally, Cao thought that a new apprentice had to cost at least one week to learn and train the casting skills, but the three freshmen just took two days for that. In addition, they can also do the work well and make it pass the inspection from consultant.

There is such a word in the field of mason which depicts the concrete casting work vividly: " Pile foundation, Rafts and Ground floor, plus the image floor and standard floor; the grade of concrete for each layer is easily be confused by negligent labors. " It means that for the concrete casting work of a high-rise building, both the type of concrete and the casting technique used in each part are different, which requires the mason to grasp the casting skills accurately in order to achieve the best results.

A seemingly ordinary thing completely moved this "Careful Master". The August in Egypt is extremely hot in the daytime, and the surface temperature in desert often exceeds 45 ° C. In order to ensure the quality of the building, the concrete casting work generally starts in the relatively low temperature period from 6 pm to 5 am. As a ‘superstar’ in the field of mason of the P3 Package, Cao was selected to conduct this difficult task undoubtedly. On the evening of August 20, the P3 package began to cast the slab of GF for Building C11 in accordance with the plan. As the only building whose structure is mainly constructed by local labors in CBD project, the concrete casting work of GF have great significance. It would indicate that in the construction of the “one Belt and one Road”, CSCEC is not only exporting labor services, but also technology and culture. At the same time, it can prove the feasibility and necessity strongly of further localized construction once again. Therefore, Cao selected 10 Egyptian workers with better communication skills and relatively proficient concreting skills from his team, preparing to work overnight. The remaining 8 labors including Ahmed were arranged to be responsible for concrete maintenance work later. Cao had his own considerations, because after completing the casting work for GF, the concrete must be maintained in time, which is also very important for the concreting work. However, Ahmed and his two fellows felt disappointed for that and came back with sadness.



At about 8 pm, all preparations for casting work are ready, and the lightly-tower spreader continuously poured the concrete to the slab of GF. Cao was very busy and paid attention to the change of the concrete, while directing the apprentice Mahamoud to adjust the pouring position, reminding the apprentice Sayid to speed up the frequency of the shock stick, and urging the apprentice Asharf to cover insulation film… 10 Egyptian workers suddenly felt overwhelmed with so much and specific tasks, and Cao couldn't help blaming himself for his thoughtless.

Suddenly, an Egyptian worker secretly appeared behind Cao, handing one cup of water. Cao looked back and saw that Ahmed and his two fellows stood there! The confused Cao told them that he did not arranged them to work overtime, and they need go back to rest quickly. Ahmed shook his head and told Cao that he had discussed with two fellows. They knew that the concrete working for GF was very important and they did not want to lose this important learning opportunity. They wanted to witness the completion of GF concreting. After listening, Cao did not say much, and directly arranged three "apprentices" to join the casting work. From that, Cao made up his mind: because of their hard-working and studious attitude, even if he should pay more effort, he would still teach them more. Throughout that evening, in addition to directing the entire casting work, Cao added a new task which was to use the spare time of the converting the concrete truck to teach the casting skills to the three apprentices. At around 5 am on August 21, the whole concreting work was completed. Cao and 13 Egyptian workers looked the results of one night's work with smile.



After this night, encouraging situations have emerged. The attendance of the three new Egyptian apprentices not only did not reduce the work efficiency of the entire team, but their hard-working and studious attitude affected other Egyptian workers in the team, and they started small competitions in the team and the phenomenon of " Work overtime during work time" appeared frequently. (P3 package implements piecework wages, which sets the daily workload of the team. As long as they complete their work, no matter how much time it takes, it will be settled as one day's wages; if they use the remaining time continues to work, overtime subsidies will be given according to the additional work).

Over time, the relationship between these Egyptian apprentices and "Careful Master" became increasingly deeper. The "Careful Master" often brought some snacks to the site and "bribe" these lovely Egyptian apprentices. These Egyptian apprentices is not to be outdone. They not only learn the concrete casting skills under the leadership of "Careful Master" and hold the high wages envied by the Egyptian workers in other teams, but also secretly learn Cao’s hometown dialect and burst out sometimes when talk with their Master, making the "Careful master" laugh.

The other Chinese foremen secretly asked Cao for the "secret" of teaching apprentices, and he smiled with honest, and then just said: "Take the 'heart' to the Egyptian workers, what you will receive is their 'heart'!"