The Tunnelling Podcast

Maintaining a tunnel requires many hours of dedicated work by highly skilled engineers. And as our network of tunnels expands, so does the maintenance demand. Asset owners and local authorities have been under pressure for years to find a cost-effective way of monitoring and maintaining their underground infrastructure. And now, engineers in Switzerland have turned to the complex structure of the human brain to find the solution.

GUEST

Alžběta Prokopová, Amberg Technologies

View Alžběta’s presentation to the International Tunnelling Association here

Digital twins can revolutionise our knowledge of underground structures in real time, during construction and in operation. These virtual replicants of real world assets enriched with real time and contextual data are giving more information about our underground structures than ever before. Assets then become more cost effective to design, to build, to maintain, and more efficient to operate with cloud based data storage enabling performance monitoring at a scale that has not been possible until very recently.

The tunnelling and wider construction industries are a little behind the curve, but the voices calling for tunnellers to harness the potential of digital twins are growing, and major infrastructure owners are preparing their assets for a digital future.

GUESTS
Michael Gaunt, Principal Information Manager at Mott MacDonald
Mark Enzer, chair, Digital Framework Task Group and Chief Technical Officer, Mott MacDonald
Peter Vale, Engineering Information Manager, Tideway
Tim Rook, associate partner, Blockchain in the industrial sector, IBM

In this episode we take a dive into the Indian tunnelling market to understanding what is driving the growth in tunnelling, see what opportunities exist for overseas tunnellers and hear how young Indian engineers are being drawn into a career underground.

With a population of nearly 1.4 billion, and a burgeoning middle class, India has growth and wealth. The strains of urbanisation on India’s cities is creating a soaring demand for metros, while expansion of hydropower and government promises to connect rural communities is driving tunnelling needs in the north and south.

India is developing its own tunnelling expertise to meet this challenge, but it is also in need of international skills and expertise. India is a land of opportunity for tunnellers.

GUEST

Sandeep Nirmal, chair of the Tunnelling Association of India’s Young Members

LINKS

Tunnelling Association of India
British Tunnelling Society Young Members
Warwick Tunnelling Course
International Tunnelling Association Young Members

Main image: Breakthrough on Contract CC-34 of Delhi Metro Phase III in 2014. The TBM is a 6.52m diameter EPB shield manufactured by Terratec

Upgrades to transport infrastructure create temporary but crippling disruptions to the service. Expanding transport capacity on metro lines is an essential element of urban development. However, carrying out major upgrades to existing lines has meant temporarily denying its service to the existing passengers. Until now.

In the charming city of Toulouse in southern France, a creative metro operator has developed a means of major expansion, doubling the line capacity, with only the slightest disruption to the service. Passengers on Toulouse Metro Line A have spent two years journeying through the heart of a construction site without even knowing it.

GUESTS

Anne-Laure Brazier, Tisseo Ingenierie

Carving out the underground space for railways, roads, waterways, urban development and even fishing and farming is how some men and women spend their entire careers. The tunnelling industry offers great opportunities for travel and adventure at the cutting edge of our understanding or geology, rock and soil mechanics and machines.

Keith Bannerman happened upon tunnelling early in his career and was hooked. Now, as chair of the International Tunnelling Association Young Members Committee he is trying to help others realise their future underground.

We sat down with Keith last month while he was on a visit to London to ask what got him hooked and what advice he has for others.

GUEST

Keith Bannerman, chair of the International Tunnelling Association Young Members committee and Senior Associate at Bamser

How a new 2.5km cable pulled railway will connect Luton Airport’s terminal to the UK rail network boosting future growth. Today rail passengers arriving at the airport must disembark from the train and finish their journey on a shuttle bus. But not for much longer. Deep sheet piles are currently being driven into the ground to set out a cut and cover tunnel that will deliver a new rail link under the airport’s existing infrastructure. These piles will cut through clay and chalk and need to resist the load of major buildings and huge aeroplanes. This calls for a massive and complex temporary support system.

GUESTS
Dan Hobson, section manager, Volker Fitzpatrick
Phil Hobson, project director, Kier
Andy Simms, major projects manager, Groundforce Shorco
Mark Whitmore, general manager for major projects, Groundforce Shorco
Richard Wildish, tunnel section agent, Kier

PARTNER
This episode is created in partnership with Groundforce Shorco

Groundforce Shorco are market leaders in excavation support safety, providing a wide range of products from trench boxes to high end hydraulic propping solutions. With 40 years of experience its people provide first class support from initial enquiry to project completion; linked with an award-winning technical service department, Groundforce Shorco fulfils customer’s excavation solutions throughout UK, Ireland and mainland Europe.

See more at: https://www.vpgroundforce.com/gb/

A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years in 1930, the third billion in 30 years in 1960, the fourth billion in 15 years in 1974, and the fifth billion in only 13 years 1987.

Growth rate hovers at a little over one per cent each year. Meaning every year there are around 80 million additional people needing a place to live, food to eat, warmth, clean water, sanitation, a place to study a place to work and the means to get to get around.

Metro stations are the heart of their urban space, affecting the community, manipulating house prices, and acting as a gateway to the rest of the world. If a metro station is unable to meet the demands of a local area, that community suffers, the economy suffers.

In this episode we visit Tottenham Court Road station to see how it is upgrading to meet growing demand and to improve the experience and well being of its users.

GUESTS
Martyn Noak, head of discipline for tunnels at Jacobs
Will Squires, digital lead for cities and development Atkins

In March 1999, the Mont Blanc tunnel fire claimed the lives of 38 tunnel users and one fire fighter. For decades debate has raged over the best approach to tackling a fire, saving life and the asset. Tunnel fires are a regular and unavoidable feature of road tunnel operation.

Now, two decades since the Mont Blanc fire the rules for road tunnel design are going through a fundamental change. As our understanding of fire behaviour and the available technologies advances, so too are the rules. Learning from the major fire incidents, tunnel designers will now need to take a new approach to fire safety.

GUESTS

Ricky Carvel, Senior Lecturer in fire dynamics at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering and co-editor of the Handbook of Tunnel Fire Safety.

Dave Harold, Fire Safety Consultant for London Bridge Associates

Paul Sparrow, Head of Tunnel Unit, Promat

SUPPORTER

Support for this episode comes from Promat

As the world’s leading passive fire protection solution

For further information about our range of products and

Every day, beneath our feet, teams of men and women dedicate their lives to unearthing the underground space. As growing populations and urbanisation mount pressure on the already strained infrastructure of our cities, these men and women work round the clock to relieve the surface from our roads, rail, waterways and more. Tunnelling is still a young industry, with tunnellers carving our future landscape as they expand our use of underground space.

In this new podcast, brought to you by the team behind the Engineering Matters podcast, and in partnership with the British Tunnelling Society, we will go to the cutting edge of tunnelling, we will see how digital technologies are making a young industry safer and helping bring projects to life that were previously thought impossible or unaffordable.

We will explore advances in tunnelling technology, improvements in safety, we will hear from leading experts, and industry disrupters. We will share lessons from failures and celebrate successes. We will tell the story of how far this industry has come and where these tunnellers are taking us next.

We will do all this in The Tunnelling Podcast