Environmental issues force construction of tunnels!

Asian tunnel engineers want to learn how Hong Kong and Singapore have used high speed tunnels to their benefit. In a survey done with 4,500 tunneling professionals, almost half of the respondents – 47.8 percent to be exact – want to know about the MTR and MRT projects in Hong Kong and Singapore respectively.

And why wouldn’t they? The proportion of the residents, who commute to work by MRT in Singapore, has increased from 24 per cent in 2000 to 31 per cent in 2010. While commute by public bus to and from work, declined 6 percentage points to 19 percent during the same period.

Given the incredible increase in MRT ridership since the turn of the century, it’s only logical that tunnel professionals would want to emulate the success of the projects in the two city states.

But that isn’t all they want to learn about. An analysis of the tunnel engineers polled show that learning how to minimize contractual risk during the construction phase was a priority.

That was followed by the designing, planning and integrating tunnels for multiple uses as well as exploring the most suitable equipment and tunnel construction methods for tunnel projects.

 With Asia’s economic growth fuelled by the enormous investment on infrastructure, this is hardly surprising.

Heinz Ehrbar, Chief Construction Officer for ALPTRANSIT GOTTHARD AG and speaker for the Tunnel Design and Construction Asia conference sums it up best.

 “Asia is the most dynamic region of the world. There will be a big need for the development of infrastructure in fast growing cities but also for high speed railways an energy projects. Many of these projects will be realised with a high percentage of underground structures because of the lack of space in urban areas or because of environmental reasons,” he said.

Not only will Heinz Ehrbar be speaking at Tunnel Design and Construction Asia. The conference will also address Risk Management in Tunnel Construction.

For more information on the conference read here!

Source: IQPC