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www.tunnellingjournal.com June/July 2017

The international journal for the tunnelling industry

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SEE PAGE 6 SEE PAGE 14 SEE PAGE 23

WORLD HONG KONG MONITOR

NEWS SCL REVIEW PROGRESS
HIGHLIGHTS FROM TJ LOOKS AT THE A ROUND UP OF
THE TJ WEBSITE’S CONSTRUCTION ALL THAT’S NEW
DAILY NEWS OF THE HONG IN THE FIELD OF
SERVICE KONG MTR’S SCL TUNNEL
PROJECT MONITORING

INNOVATION -
WHAT DOES
IT MEAN?
SMART SEGMENT
TESTING IN HONG KONG
MATERIALS DESIGN FOR
LININGS
 Conquering
Connecting Norway by rail: 5 Herrenknecht
Hard Rock TBMs are on the move for 45 km
of new first-class rail tubes at the New
Ulrikentunnel and Follo Line projects.

Toughest
Biting its way through the Scandinavian stone,
the TBMs are facing the absolute hardness test
when dealing with up to 350 MPa rock strengths.
Equipped with excavation tools for such a
demanding mission, the Herrenknecht TBMs
will complete all their tasks.

Hard Rock
Massive geologies call for experi-
enced partners. Herrenknecht
is making headway through hard
rock – for over 822 km.

Contractors:
Follo Line: Acciona Infraestructuras and Ghella ANS
Ulrikentunnel: Skanska Strabag Ulriken ANS

Pioneering Underground Technologies

www.herrenknecht.com
 contentS
5 Editor’s comment

6 Snapshots of
www.tunnellingjournal.com news

8 Innovation - distinguishing leaders from

followers?
Clients and their advisors want their supply
chains to bring innovative ideas to major
projects and programmes. But is that the
right place to be trying to innovate, asks TJ

14 The Shatin to Central Link success so far

Tom Barrett, Construction Manager with MTR
Corporation, and KL Lee, Dragages -
Bouygues JV Project Director, describe the
Shatin to Central Link Project focusing on the
new technology adopted

23 Monitoring Progress
Better ways of collecting and using data
on tunnelling projects are fast-forwarding
problem solving and decision making.
Though we’re still at the bottom of a
Top: One of two steep learning curve, some are already
Terratec EPBMs
that are to be
reaping the benefits
delivered to
Bangkok (p6)
30 Testing smart segments in Hong Kong
TJ looks at an innovative instrumentation
scheme implemented that evaluates the
Above:
Innovation in load distribution in segments during
practice (p8) erection and tunnelling and compares
design assumptions obtained by numerical
Right: Hong simulations.
Kong’s Shatin to
Central Link
Project (p14)
38 Materials design for tunnel lining
Dr Benoit Jones of Inbye Engineering looks
at materials design for tunnel linings.
Above right:
Monitoring in
action as used
on the
43 DABs – a preferred mechanism for
tunnelling projects?
TJ looks at why Dispute Adjudication
Bucharest Metro
(p23) Boards could be the preferred dispute
settlement mechanism for the
underground construction industry
Left: Setting up
a smart
segment as
trialled on the
47 Life-cycle assessments of rock bolts
Taking the example of rock bolts, this
article seeks to demonstrate the value of
Liantang Lung the life-cycle assessment method in a
Shan Highway
broader approach.
Tunnels in Hong
Kong (p30)
50 Contacts

TUNNELLING JOURNAL 3
 editorScomment
More than just
a good idea?
OK, I admit it, I’m confused -
again. It’s this word ‘innovation’
that’s causing my brain freeze. The
root of my confusion is in trying to
distinguish between ‘innovation’
and ‘a good idea’.
If nobody had ever had a good
idea, we’d have become extinct
about 67 million year after the
dinosaurs. Nobody ever said, “don’t
worry about it, this square wheel’s
fine,” somebody just realized a
round one worked better. Is that
innovation – or just a good idea
born of an instinct to survive/thrive?
As they say ‘Necessity is the
mother of invention’ and some
humans just naturally seem to find
solutions easier than others. Maybe
that sums up why one person will
become an engineer, and another
may become a banker. The engineer
will, by his or her very DNA, have a
natural leaning towards problem
solving through the use and
assimilation of learned knowledge,
experience, and lateral thinking. It’s
almost what drives an engineer -
why be one if you don’t want to
solve problems? The banker will
more likely be driven by the need
for materialistic possessions.
Maybe all engineers have at least
some right to call themselves
innovators, just by their very nature?
According to that golden chalice
of internet sourced, ever reliable
information, Wikipedia, ‘Innovation’
is defined: as a "new idea, device or
method". However, innovation is
often also viewed as the application
of better solutions that meet new
requirements, unarticulated needs,
or existing market needs. This is
accomplished through more-
effective products, processes,
services, technologies, or business
models that are readily available to
markets, governments and society.”
So, is innovation simply a more
laterally thought out ‘good idea’?
Are there levels of good ideas? A
simple one is just a ‘good idea’,
whilst a really clever one earns the
term ‘innovation’!
Personally I’m leaning towards
this view, and that to be classed an
innovation, it really does have to be
verging on a game-changer of an
idea/process/product. What
Transport for London (TfL) did
during the procurement of Bank
Station is getting there for my
money. What they asked of the JV’s
bidding for the work was a solution
to its problem. What TfL wanted
from the end use of the asset –
Bank Station - was presented to the
JV’s, and they were told to work
back from those requirements. They
just had to make sure their design
solved all the problems. Now that’s
innovative procurement that openly
encourages innovative design.
Personally, I like the more
simplistic description by the robotics
engineer, Joseph F. Engelberger,
who approaches the whole question
from a different angle, believing
that innovations require only three
things: 1) A recognized need, 2)
Competent people with relevant
‘ Maybe all
engineers have
at least some
technology, and 3) Financial
support.
Now that puts me in mind of a
right to call
certain gentleman in Los Angeles, themselves
who’s truly innovative mind has very
recently lead him straight to the innovators, just
door of the tunnelling world – and
who knows what he will come up by their very
with. More than just a good idea
I’m sure. He is after all, an engineer.
I’m going to sign off not with an
innovation, it’s not even a good
nature?
’
idea, just a bit of common sense.
Can the two biggest tunnelling
events in the world please have a
chat with each other well in
advance just to make sure they are
NOT held a week apart on different
continents? Thanks in advance, it
would be very much appreciated by
all of us!
Tris Thomas
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 5
NEWS FROM THE WEB www.tunnellingjournal.com - breaking industry news first!
The Dariali Hydropower Project in the Republic of Georgia is commissioned
TBM helps world’s first
carbon neutral power plant
to complete
May 17, 2017
In April 2017, a ceremony was held to celebrate
the commissioning of the Dariali Hydropower
Project in the Republic of Georgia. The event
marked the completion of the first carbon-neutral
hydropower project in the world.
TBM manufacturer, Robbins invested in the
project by gaining equity through supplying
tunnelling equipment and services in consortium
with contractor Peri. “Robbins understood the
risk in the tunnelling portion of the project and
we were compensated for taking on part of the
risk. Peri is a long-time customer, as we supplied a
TBM to them 15 years ago for a small project in
Georgia. It was great to be invited to invest and
risk share on this project, and to work together
again,” said Robbins President Lok Home. The
5km long headrace tunnel for the power station
was bored with the use of a 5.5m diameter
Robbins Main Beam TBM starting in February
2012.
Bids in for huge Brenner
contract
May 17, 2017
Five bids have been tendered for the largest
construction lot for the Brenner Base
Tunnel, Pfons-Brenner. The construction lot
includes the excavation of the main tunnels
between Pfons and Brenner, about 9km of
exploratory tunnel and the emergency stop
and the cross-over at St. Jodok. In total,
about 50km of tunnel will be driven. The
tenderers are:
• Impresa Pizzarotti & C. S.P.A., Implenia
Österreich GmbH, Metrostav a.s., BeMo
Tunnelling GmbH
• Strabag AG, Salini Impregilo
• Acciona Construcción, S.A., Impresa
Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti –
C.M.C. di Ravenna Società Cooperativa
• Astaldi S.p.A., Ghella S.p.A., Oberosler
Cav. Pietro S.r.l., P.A.C. S.p.A.
• Porr Bau GmbH, G. Hinteregger & Söhne
6 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
Baugesellschaft m.b.H., Società Italiana
per Condotte d’Acqua S.p.A., Itinera
S.p.A.
So far 61km of tunnel have been driven,
which is about a quarter of the total volume
of excavations required.
The Brenner Tunnel has an overall cost of
€8.8bn, 40% of which is funded by the EU
and the remaining 60% by funds made
available by Italy and Austria (with Italy
providing €2.65bn).
Terratec to deliver two 5.7m diameter
EPBMs to Bangkok, Thailand
Double EPBM delivery to
Bangkok
May 3, 2017
In April 2017, TERRATEC celebrated the
successful Factory Acceptance Tests of two
new 5.7m diameter tight radius EPBMs
destined for the Bueng Nong Bon to Chao
Phraya River Diversion Tunnel Project, in
Bangkok, Thailand.
The ceremonies were attended by
representatives of the Bangkok
Metropolitan Administration (BMA) and
Thai contractor Sino-Thai Engineering &
Construction Public Company Limited
(STECON).
Located in the south-east of Bangkok, the
9.2km long Bueng Nong Bon to Chao
Phraya River Diversion Project is the third of
four major flood prevention tunnels to be
built under the BMA’s long-term plan to
manage the severe flash floods that
currently plague the Thai capital during the
rainy season.
Shieldhall Tunnel reaches
half-way
May 3, 2017
Scottish Water’s 5km long Shieldhall Tunnel,
in the south of Glasgow, passed a
significant milestone yesterday when the
Herrenknecht TBM being driven by
contractor – the Glasgow Tunnel
Partnership, a joint venture of Costain and
VINCI Construction Grands Projets –
reached the half way point under Pollok
Park.
The £100M, 4.7m diameter tunnel will
enable Scottish Water to improve water
quality in the River Clyde and tackle
flooding. Tunnelling started last July and is
expected to complete later this year.
Paul Kerr, Scottish Water’s capital
investment general manager, said: “We are
delighted to have reached this milestone
half-way stage in the tunnel construction.
“The Shieldhall Tunnel team includes
some of the best and most experienced
tunnellers in the world and they are making
great progress with what is the biggest
project of its type Scottish Water has ever
undertaken.”
Normet to form JV in China
April 28, 2017
The Normet Group and JCHX Mining
Management Co Ltd have signed an
agreement to form a joint venture to
manufacture and sell underground mining
equipment in the Chinese market.
The joint venture will initially focus on
manufacturing and sales of multipurpose
mining vehicles and related accessories in
the Chinese mining market. This is an
important milestone in plans to expand in
the growing Chinese mining market.
The joint venture company will be
established to Daye, Hubei Province in
China.
“With this joint venture we aim together
with our partner to provide state of the art
mechanized mining equipment which will
improve productivity, safety and efficiency
for our Chinese customers. This joint
venture agreement is in line with Normet
strategy to develop even stronger foothold
in China and with an experienced industrial
partner like JCHX this will happen faster,”
said Robin Lindahl. President and CEO of
Normet Group.
AECOM awarded Stonehenge
technical support contract
April 13, 2017
Highways England has appointed AECOM
to provide technical support in the
detailed design and planning application
 www.tunnellingjournal.com - breaking industry news first! NEWS FROM THE WEB

process for the UK’s A303 Stonehenge Melbourne Metro bids Cross Yarra Partnership – comprising
scheme. AECOM will be Highways received Lendlease Engineering, John Holland,
England’s Technical Partner for the April 9, 2017 Bouygues Construction and Capella Capital
project, which includes proposals for a The final bids for the A$6bn Melbourne Moving Melbourne Together – comprising
2.9km long tunnel near Stonehenge. Metro Tunnel and Stations Public Private Pacific Partnerships, CPB Contractors, Ghella,
In its £15bn five-year Road Investment Partnership (PPP) have been received, and are Salini Impregilo, Serco and Macquarie Capital
Strategy – the biggest in a generation – being assessed by the Melbourne Metro Rail Their proposals include more than 100,000
the UK Government has pledged to Authority. The bids are from three shortlisted pages of detailed plans to build the nine-
upgrade the A303 corridor into a high consortia that include some of the biggest kilometre Metro Tunnel and five new
quality, high performing route. construction firms in Australia and around underground stations at Arden, Parkville,
The aim is to provide an enhanced link the world. They are: CBD North, CBD South and Domain.
between the M3 in the South East and Continuum Victoria – comprising At the same time, early works on the
the M5 in the South West, improving ACCIONA Infrastructure, Ferrovial Agroman, $10.9 billion mega-project have received
journeys for millions of people, and Honeywell, Downer EDI and Plenary formal planning approval, and will ramp up
additional schemes in the first road Origination over the coming months.
investment period include dualling the
A303 between Sparkford and Ilchester
and the A358 between Taunton and
Southfields.
As part of the investment, a £1.4bn
project has been proposed to improve the
single carriageway section of the A303 at
Stonehenge, and to assist in further
developing and delivering the scheme,
Highways England has awarded the
Technical Partner contract to AECOM, in
partnership with Mouchel and MACE.
The Technical Partner will be required to
develop the preliminary design for the
scheme, manage and lead on the
Development Consent Order application
for the scheme, and provide technical
assurance of the detailed design and
construction.
The eight-year contract, valued
between £40 and £50 million, has been
awarded under an open tender
competition.

Lower Thames Crossing

route chosen
April 13, 2017
The UK’s Secretary of State for Transport
has announced the preferred route for the
£4.4bn – £6.2bn Lower Thames Crossing,
a 3.2km long bored tunnel crossing under
the River Thames east of Gravesend and
Tilbury.
This announcement follows an
exhaustive review of options and extensive
analysis of more than 47,000 responses to
our 2016 public consultation.
The preferred route announcement
paves the way for the next stage of
development which will be to progress the
design and assessment of the preferred
route in more detail, as well as carry out
environmental surveys, more detailed air
quality and noise impact assessments,
further traffic modelling, and various
design challenges around, for example,
the junctions.
The new crossing will offer the improved
journeys, new connections, network
reliability and economic benefits that only
a new, alternative crossing location, away
from Dartford, can provide.

TUNNELLING JOURNAL 7
 R&D
SHIFT
INNOVATION

TRIALS
MAJOR PROJECTS
IDEAS
RISK

PROCUREMENT

INNOVATION
R&D

COLLABORATION
MAJOR PROJECTS
FUNDING
CULTURE
INNOVATION RISK
INNOVATION –
distinguishing leaders
from followers?
Clients and their BACK IN 2012, a lot of time and effort was complicated for the project,” explains Mike
spent investigating how energy could be Moseley, who at the time worked for Rehau
advisors want their harvested from Crossrail’s 42km of tunnels and now, as construction lead for the
supply chains to bring which would run under central London. Heat Knowledge Transfer Network, plays a pivotal
created in the tunnels would be used to heat role in UK innovation platform i3P – of which,
innovative ideas to homes and businesses in the winter, and in more later.
the summer the tunnels would be cooled by The main reason this idea never made it off
major projects and using the surrounding ground as a heat sink. the starting blocks was timing. The tunnelling
programmes. But is It wasn’t a new idea. Rehau’s Tunnel Energy contracts had been let in 2010, and to create
Lining concept, where pipes are cast into and install modified segments would have
that the right place to tunnel segments, had already been trialled in required changes – and created more risk.
be trying to innovate, Germany and Austria. But it wasn’t right for The received wisdom has always been that
Crossrail. major projects are risky enough without
asks Kristina Smith. “It was a bit too late and a bit too adding to them with ‘innovations’. Indeed, a

8 TUNNELLING JOURNAL

report by the Institute for Government on
London’s 2012 Olympics, ‘Making the Games,
What Government can learn from London
2012’ concluded that one of the big lessons
for publicly-funded major projects was ‘Limit
Innovation’. John Armitt, who was chairman of
the Olympic Delivery Authority, is quoted as
saying:
“We on occasions resisted anything which
was going to be too technically clever because
we couldn’t take the risks…It might sound dull
being second but it’s often better.”
Yet now clients are demanding innovation
from their supply chains. Andrew
Wolstenholme, who became Crossrail chief
executive in 2011, introduced an innovation
programme called Innovate18, partly in
response to the failed attempt to introduce
Rehau’s technology. National Grid has a
LinkedIn page devoted to the theme,
‘Innovation at National Grid’.
EDF Energy says that innovation is one of
five guiding principles for the new Hinkley
Point C nuclear power station in Somerset, UK.
“Innovation will be a permanent
feature of Hinkley Point C – it is
a cultural feature and a strategic
choice on this project,” says EDF
Energy CEO Vincent de Rivaz in
a blog. “There will be many
other innovations to come.”
In Los Angeles, transport
authority Metro created an
Office of Extraordinary
Innovation in 2015. Other
authorities have followed suit:
Houston Metro set up its office
of innovation last year; expect
more soon.
In response some contractors
are busy creating new roles:
head of innovation, chief
innovation office, innovation manager. Costain
and Skanska were early to the party, setting up
their innovation roles in 2008 and 2011
respectively. Others are catching up. BAM
Nuttall appointed its first head of innovation in
May last year, and J Murphy & Sons in April this
year.
What is innovation?
If press releases are to be believed, innovation
is everywhere. New products are ‘innovative’
just because they’re new, a management re-
organisation is an ‘innovative’ approach. One
editor – not TJ’s - has banned the use of
‘innovative’ in all news stories as he says it has
been rendered meaningless.
For Colin Eddie, managing director of design
consultancy UnPS, innovation is about giant
leaps forward. The man behind the
introduction of many new tunnelling
technologies including steel fibre reinforced
concrete and laser measurement to control
sprayed concrete lining thickness likes to think
very big.
UnPS puts a huge amount of money and
resource into R&D and even has its own
laboratory. One of its latest inventions is self-
healing sprayed concrete, coming to a major
project in London very soon.
“To do R&D in infrastructure, you have to
spend a lot of money,” says Eddie, who has
been Visiting Professor of Innovation &
Tunnelling at Warwick University since 2015.
“It’s not the sort of thing you can do for a few
thousand pounds. To invent a new type of
concrete material costs hundreds of thousands
of pounds.”
Eddie has pulled together a partnership of
10 industry organisations to pursue some other
ideas which could potentially transform the
underground industry (see box p10). Called the
Innovative Technologies for Underground
Infrastructure (ITUI), the group has set up a
R&D programme with funding from its
members and from the UK Government.
While Eddie seeks step changes, others
argue that small innovations as well as big
ones are important for moving the industry
forward. In a major project environment,
A large scale innovation would be the Extruded Tunnel Lining Machine
changes that don’t cost too much to develop,
or require too many trials or iterations are the
easiest to implement.
Small was definitely the order of the day for
Crossrail’s Innovate18 programme. The
£14.8billion project invested £550,000 in
innovations or 0.003 percent of the project
cost. Over 1,000 innovations were submitted
to Innovate18 of which 400 were accepted,
and 100 used on more than one project.
Funding for Innovate18 came from the 16
tier 1 contractors who signed up to the
programme, who each agreed to commit
£25,000, with Crossrail matching those funds,
which suggests that not all the available
funding was deployed. Work by Imperial
College London, one of the academic
institutions which helped guide the
programme, has suggested that the benefits
from the innovations deployed range between
£3.5M and £5.4M.
There were lots of challenges in trying to
implement innovations on Crossrail, not least
the fact that the innovation programme started
four years into the project. Most of the
INNOVATION
challenges stemmed from the fact that
innovation requires resources which can’t just
be whisked up from nowhere when project
teams are delivering challenging, multi-million
pound jobs.
What Innovate18 did do was to create some
momentum, continuity and awareness. Last
year Innovate 18 morphed into i3P, the
Infrastructure Industry Innovation Platform. The
UK’s Tideway project and others were looking
to copy what Crossrail had done; they decided
that banding together and potentially working
on innovations collectively was a more valuable
approach.
Andy Mitchell, CEO of Tideway, is chair of
i3P. Its 22 members include several clients
including Crossrail, the Environment Agency,
Network Rail, Hinckley Point C, as well as the
tier 1 contractors from Innovate 18 and
consultants Arup, Atkins and CH2M. The
Knowledge Transfer Network acts as the i3P
secretariat.
“Having the ability to look at problems
across a number of projects will be where the
benefits of i3P will come from in the future,”
says Moseley. “We may have an idea which
could be of interest to someone like Tideway
but that would provide marginal benefit. If that
idea could be shared across two or three other
organisations, then it would become viable.”
Currently the funding is via membership and
should equate to around £0.75M to spend
over the next three years. “It’s not a huge
amount but it’s enough to pump-prime a lot of
little ideas,” says Moseley.
For Tim Embley, group innovation &
knowledge manager for Costain, the joint
approach of i3P represents a real step forward.
“From my perspective, I am delighted to see
clients recognising the agenda and putting
effort behind it. What Andrew Wolstenholme
did with respect to Innovate18 really unlocked
the potential of the supply chain. Other clients
looked at it and wanted to do the same.
“Clients now recognise that through
leadership they can encourage an environment
of collaboration between themselves, the
supply chain and create continuity across
contracts that delivers world-class assets.”
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 9
 INNOVATION

Changing the (underground) world

Innovative Technologies for
Underground Infrastructure (ITUI)
is a partnership led by UnPS, part
of the Morgan Sindall Group. Its
ambitions are not-at-all modest.
“We are looking for a paradigm
shift in underground
infrastructure,” says Colin Eddie,
managing director of UnPS.
The other partners in the group
are Warwick University, where
Eddie is Visiting Professor of
Innovation and Tunnelling,
National Grid, Force One, Brokk,
Tarmac, BASF, Uretek and MTC,
the Manufacturing Technology
Centre at Coventry.
With £25,000 of funding from the
group and £85,000 from
Government body the
Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (ESPRC), ITUI has
established PhDs which are
looking to investigate some big
ideas:
1 Resilient tunnel
linings
This programme will investigate
3 Real time displacement
control using polymers
Expandable geopolymers,
offer a more efficient alternative
to compensation grouting. The
first ever trial took place in mid-
advanced materials such as high- traditionally used for May on one of the UK’s Tideway
performance fibre reinforced underpinning houses, potentially West sites
composites and nano-engineered
composites. It will look at using
these materials to develop
extruded tunnel linings. The goal
is to use thinner linings, which are
safer to install.
2 Disruptive
technologies
Working with MTC
(Manufacturing Technology
Centre) in Coventry, researchers
will look at alternative ways of
cutting through the ground such
as water jets, lasers, ultrasonics Trial looking
and plasma cutters. Combining at Real time
these methods with remote displacement
controlled and robotic technology control using
promises reduced risk of accidents expansive grouts
and greater productivity.

Why innovate? For UnPS, the reasons are similar. “Many of

Having just presented some of Bouygues’
innovations for TBMs at last year’s British
Tunnelling Society Conference, someone
asked tunnel technical director Bruno Combe
why Bouygues put so much money into R&D.
For Combe the answer was obvious and
straight-forward:
“We want to prosper in the tunnelling
industry and our target is to have zero
accidents on our sites. That’s the reason why
we invest a lot.”
The Robotic arm used for disc cutter
changes on the Hong Kong’s Tuen
Mun–Chek Lap Kok Link TBM
the things we have developed and that we
are looking at now are aimed at improving
safety,” says Eddie. “The only way you can
get to zero accidents is to eliminate the task
all together or use a machine to do it.
Another big benefit is that it gives us
commercial advantage and helps us win
work.”
Part of UnPS’s commercial advantage comes
from getting and keeping the right people on
the team, says Eddie: “We have a very
talented team that we need to keep
interested. Doing R&D is a way to attract and
retain good people. For a lot of my team,
money is not the main motivation: they like
being involved in big projects and R&D.”
Around 40% of UnPS staff have Masters
qualifications and 5% have PhDs.
Persuading the Morgan Sindall Group
board to continue the investment in R&D is
made easier by the UK Government’s R&D tax
credits scheme, which return some of a
company’s corporation tax for genuine R&D
activities. “The UK Government deserves
recognition for that,” says Eddie. “Tax credits
are a real encouragement.”
For Costain, an innovative spirit arrived with
CEO Andrew Wylie. He took the helm in late
2005, as the contractor faced financial
difficulties.
Wylie’s strategy was to focus on fewer,
bigger customers which meant broadening
the services it offered to those customers and
finding new ways to do things. So today, for
example, Costain is carrying out a system-
ATC JV of Alsto, TSO and Costain are
using an automated drilling machine
developed by Rowa, a world first
wide tunnel fit out on Crossrail in joint venture
with Alston and TSO, something that it
previously would never have attempted.
Wylie created the post of group innovation
and knowledge manager and recruited
Embley to it in 2008. Embley drew inspiration
from manufacturers such as BAE and Rolls
Royce, concluding that R&D could not be a
separate department but instead had to be
built into everyday activities.
Costain looks to suck in ideas from
wherever it can, and has been busy sending
employees, clients and suppliers on three day
‘Innovation in Action’ courses in a bid to turn
everyone into an innovator. Some ideas come
through research programmes - the company
has links with 13 universities and has funded
14 PhDs since Embley arrived. Ideas are shared

10 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
 INNOVATION
and developed within the business and with
partners through the Costain Innovation
Portal.
Embley doesn’t believe that innovations
have to be huge to be significant. One of the
most immediate ways to innovate is to share
ideas across sectors, he says, often introducing
clients who he thinks can cross-fertilize. But
there is big stuff too such as the Rowa
automated drill rigs, developed to drill the
250,000-plus holes for services inside
Crossrail’s tunnel, improving both efficiency
and safety.
The Office of Extraordinary Innovation
Though it sounds like the name of a children’s
fantasy movie, the Los Angeles Metro’s Office
of Extraordinary Innovation(OEI) is not busy
inventing hovering
walkways or
teleporters. Its
function is two-fold:
strategic planning to
set Metro’s vision
and goals for the
future and driving
partnerships with the
private sector.
“Our problems
here require
something a little
extraordinary,”
explains Metro’s chief
innovation officer
Joshua Schank. “The traffic and the
congestion are the first or second issues on
everybody’s mind. The transit system requires
rapid improvement so it will take something
extraordinary to deal with this scope of a
problem.”
New CEO Phil Washington arrived in March
2015 and by October 2015, Schank – who
formerly headed up think-tank the Eno Center
for Transportation in Washington -– was in
the post. Washington came from Denver
where a 3P (public private partnership) deal
had shaved a cool $300M of a transit
programme, by delivering the required service
on one track rather than two.
“It’s outcome-based procurement that we
are pushing for, not only for major capital
projects but for new mobility opportunities,”
says Schank. “At the moment we are almost
always looking at specifications, but we need
to be looking at outcomes. That’s the shift
that has to occur.”
Metro has created an Unsolicited Proposal
Policy, encouraging companies to approach it
with ideas which must include – but are not
limited to – private sector funding. Since
February 2016, it has received 72 unsolicited
proposals, 10 of those for major capital
projects for highways or transit.
“There are also things at the other end of
the spectrum – small technology ideas that
improve the lives of our commuters,” says
Schank. “We are looking at a partnership with
12 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
a firm that wants to do micro transit, similar
to Uber or Lyft but larger vehicles and priced
below Uber and Lyft and take you point to
point. These are the kinds of things we are
excited about.”
Though 3P may not seem such an
extraordinary approach, Schank points out
that LA Metro’s funding situation puts it in a
stronger position than most. In November
2016, LA’s citizens voted to continue
indefinitely with a half cent traffic relief tax
and add to that a half cent sales tax to fund
transport improvements; a move known as
Measure M.
“Measure M funding in perpetuity means
we are in a better position to say ‘show us
what you can do and come to us with your
ideas’,” says Schank. “Many countries have
TfL used the Innovative Contractor
Engagement (ICE) procurement
approach at Bank Station
old infrastructure in need of repair and don’t
have identified funding streams to do it. It’s
hard to get the private sector excited about
taking on that risk. We have got a mandate
from voters to build and repair our
infrastructure and the funding to do it.”
Schank’s team of four is also charged with
changing the culture of its LA Metro
colleagues. “Part of what we have been trying
to do is shift people’s mindset from identifying
problems with the proposals towards figuring
out solutions for getting them implemented,”
says Schank. “If someone says ‘here’s this new
thing’, your instinct is to say ‘it won’t work’.
Instead, let’s assume we want it to work.”
About procurement
LA Metro is not alone in thinking that new
forms of procurement are at the heart of any
innovation programme. Traditional forms of
procurement don’t, in general, encourage
innovation. Even those that include a pain-
gain share mechanism only cover things that
impact on capital cost, not the cost in
operation or the service being delivered to the
end user.
Emerging forms of procurement aimed to
foster innovation are based around
collaboration. This doesn’t refer to a general
spirit of co-operation but is more about
changing the way information flows, finding
the right means of incentivisation and goal-
setting that addresses value to the end user.
Thames Water set up its eight2O Alliance in
2013, after extensive discussions with its
supply chain. The Alliance, which will run for
12 years, is charged with reducing spend by
20% between 2015 and 2020 and helping to
meet customer service targets set by water
industry regulator Ofwat. Savings due to
efficiencies go into a Risk, Opportunity and
Innovation fund which the Alliance can
choose to invest in new ideas which it believes
will deliver further savings later.
Highways England has been using
frameworks for some time, the latest version
being the Collaborative Delivery Framework
which it awarded in November 2014. The
road authority has some ambitious goals for
the framework: to reduce delivery time each
year by half, then half again, by a quarter and
then by a further
quarter and to
reduce cost by 4
percent year-on-
year.
Thames Water’s
alliance and
Highways England’s
framework are
founded on the fact
that there is a
programme of work
ahead. Investment
decisions are made
today with the
knowledge that they
can deliver value in the future, perhaps a few
projects down the line. For one-off projects,
run by a one-off organisation, the proposition
is different.
One idea for single projects comes from
Transport for London which is working on an
early contractor involvement approach, first
applied on the Bank Station Upgrade (see TJ
February/March 2014). Early is early – before
planning submissions – with the winning
bidder having to look way beyond pricing a
basic design to submitting ideas about how
the station’s performance and passenger
experience can be improved in the long term.
None of these forms of procurement offer a
perfect environment for innovation yet. It’s
early days and we will see them develop as
organisations themselves change the way they
think and operate.
In the UK, there’s a feeling that a certain
group of contractors and suppliers are pulling
ahead of the field. And when there’s plenty of
work around, the supply chain has more
power to dictate the way that projects are
procured.
Latecomers to the party will take a while to
catch up. “Innovation is a cultural change
programme,” says Embley. “Companies are
recognising that they can no longer nod and
say ‘yes, we do innovation’. There’s only so
long you can say you are doing innovation
when you are not, before you lose market
share.”
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 PROJECT REPORT

The Shatin
Figure 1: Plan map of the entire
SCL project

success
Tom Barrett, Construction Manager with MTR
Corporation Limited, and KL Lee, Dragages -
Bouygues JV Project Director, give this
account of the Shatin to Central Link Project
focusing on the new technology adopted and
the challenges faced during construction
THE US$10.2BN Shatin to Central Link US$760M in Jan 2015, and finally the land which is under-laid by a layer of marine
(SCL) project, being built by the MTR US$53M Admiralty South Overrun Tunnel, deposit; beneath this is an alluvium layer
Corporation, involves the construction of under contract 1122, which was awarded which in turn overlays the Completely
17km of new underground railway as part to Vinci Construction Grands Projets in Oct Decomposed Granitic (CDG) formations and
of the strategic infrastructure development 2015. granite rock. The thickness of fill, marine
in Hong Kong. The new link is being Here we will focus on the complex works deposits and alluvium vary along the SCL
completed in two phases, namely the undertaken during the construction of the tunnels alignment.
11km Tai Wai to Hung Hom section, and first contract awarded, SCL1128 – the In total, on SCL1128, there are four, 6.5m
the 6km long Hung Hom to Admiralty South Ventilation Building to Admiralty i.d. rail tunnels to be constructed by TBM.
Section. Tunnels, which is using an array of The two eastern rail tunnels, at about 670m
The SCL is comprised of 60 Contracts in innovative tunnelling methodologies, in length, are stacked with the deeper Up
total, with 12 being major civil contracts. including the first use of Variable Density Track (UT) tunnel excavated through varied
Construction commenced in 2012 with the TBM technology in Hong Kong, in its geology with cover ranging from 20 to
Tai Wai to Hung Hom Section expected to completion. Due to the complexities 30m. The shallower Down Track (DT) tunnel
be in operation in 2019 and the Hung Hom SCL1128 was awarded under the Target is excavated with 6.5 to 10m of cover
to Admiralty Section expected to open in Cost form of contract. through the interface between the marine
2021. deposits and the fill material; as such old
Tunnel geology and layout seawalls, and junk dumped into the sea
Hung Hom to Admiralty The entire area is a low lying plain close to including WWII ordinance were unavoidable
The Hung Hom to Admiralty Section, has sea level made up of previously reclaimed increasing the risk significantly. The two
many complicated interfaces and issues to
contend with throughout its six-year
Figure 2: Plan of part of the Hung Hom to Admiralty section of SCL with the
construction. A dense urban environment,
SCL1128 TBM driven tunnels lying either side of the new Exhibition Station
limited space for construction, multiple
stakeholders and complex existing
structures are par for the course in Hong
Kong construction and not to be taken
lightly.
Hung Hom to Admiralty is comprised of
four main civil contracts. The first awarded
was Contract 1128-South Ventilation
Building to Admiralty Tunnels, which went
to Dragages-Bouygues Joint Venture in Aug
2014 for US$680M. Secondly was Contract
1121-Cross Harbour Tunnels, which was
won by the Penta-Ocean - China State Joint
Venture, in Dec 2014 for US$550M. Thirdly
was Contract 1123-Exhibition Station and
Western Approach Tunnel, won by the
Leighton - China State Joint Venture for

14 TUNNELLING JOURNAL

to Central Link
so far
western rail tunnels, each about 500m in
length, are side by side excavated through
varied geology comprising of granite and
CDG with cover ranging from 20 to 30m
One of the alternatives proposed at the
tender stage involved changing both the
eastern UT and DT alignments. The deeper
UT tunnel alignment was raised so that the
transition zone between the CDG and
granite rock was minimized to reduce wear
and damage to the cutter head tools. This in
turn reduced the number of Compressed Air
Intervention (CAI), a high risk activity.
Overall the DT tunnel alignment was
lowered 0.5m to provide an increased
margin to the confinement pressure design,
this was critical due to the fact that the
hydraulic gradient is affected by the Victoria
Harbour tidal influences. The lower
alignment brought the TBM excavation
closer to an existing trunk sewer with a
reduced clearance of 900mm, as such
stringent monitoring was required. The
maximum change in level on the DT was
2.5m lower than the original alignment
located near an existing flyover, due to an
old sea wall, which partially supports the
flyover.
TBM Selection
During the tender stage the three deeper
rail tunnels, the DT and UT West, and the
UT East, were specified to be completed by
slurry Mixshield TBM (MS TBM) with the
shallow cover DT East to be excavated by
EPBM. At tender DBJV highlighted four key
concerns in using an EBPM:
• Risk of collapse/settlement due to
inefficiencies in managing the
confinement support due to the complex
geology and limited cover. Rock
transitions and sections containing
boulders and rubble increase the risk of
sink hole formation;
• risk of foam blowouts;
• likelihood the spoil could not conform to
the specified moisture content below
25% to satisfy HK fill material
requirements, meaning that the tunnel
spoil would need secondary treatment;
and
PROJECT REPORT
Fig 3 and Fig 3b – East Geology
example with structures
• simple compressed air operating in a Mix-
shield mode rather than EPB, giving DBJV
the option to re-launch the machine
faster
The project team was aware of the
experience from the Klang Valley MRT
project in Kuala Lumpur, where the Variable
Density type TBM (VDM) was used for the
first time to overcome the complex karstic
limestone geology. The VDM overcame
these issues using thicker and denser slurry
inside the excavation chamber to provide
improved face support. In light of this, a
VDM offered the flexibility of both a
Mixshield TBM and an EPBM.
DBJV considered these concerns and
proposed the use of a VDM for the DT East
drive, and the proposal was accepted by
MTR.
Using the experience from Kuala Lumpur,
and previous TBM works in Hong Kong the
DBJV team, headed by Didier Jacques,
General Construction Manager, and
Contract 1128 Background,
then and now
Contract 1128-Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter to Admiralty Tunnels is split east and west by
the new Exhibition Station. The east section initially comprised a short 150m cut and cover
tunnel through a section of reclaimed land linking the immersed tube tunnels to the land
based tunnels. The construction of a large shaft to house the South Ventilation Building along
with an integrated new Police Officers’ Club and the eastern approach tunnels from the
ventilation building to the new Exhibition Station, is constructed under Contract 1123.
A key change proposed by DBJV and accepted by MTRC was to excavate an early launching
shaft in the reclaimed land; this allowed the two eastern drives to be completed prior to the
excavation of the ventilation building shaft some 12 months earlier than planned. This was a
crucial de-risking exercise to ensure that any unforeseen ground conditions or obstructions
could be dealt with without causing overall programme delay.
The west section initially comprised a short 45m cut and cover tunnel linking Exhibition
Station to the Fenwick Pier Street Emergency Access/Egress shaft and the western approach
tunnels from the access/egress shaft to the extension of Admiralty Station constructed under
South Island Line Project Contract 901-Admiralty Integrated Station and SCL Enabling Works
constructed by the Kier-Laing O'Rourke-Kaden Joint Venture. The cut and cover section also
provided provision for the future North Island Line (NIL) running tunnels.
The western launch shaft was replaced by a 'peanut' shaped shaft, to reduce the lateral
support required, integrated with a novel TBM launch arrangement using both a concrete and
steel bell to apply the TBM load forwards through the concrete bell eliminating constraints
and associated risks of large standard thrust frame system. Both improved safety on site.
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 15
16 TUNNELLING JOURNAL

Herrenknecht, the machine supplier,
developed some key adaptions to the VDM
concept to take into account Hong Kong’s
geology, specifically granite to CDG
transitions and Marine Deposits.
The changes included increasing the main
drive motors from eight to twelve, installing a
jaw crusher inside the slurrifier box to deal
with the granite, increasing the slurrifier box
size to 6m3, along with minimising influence
to the confinement bubble via the slurrifier to
working chamber connections. Direct and
independent injection lines to the cutterhead
were designed for clayey ground conditions
and to regulate the bentonite injection ratio
and the control interface was simplified using
touch screen technology and automatic and
semi-automatic control settings.
Figure 4: Working parameters for a VDM
Figure 5: The general arrangement of the VDM with main components indicated
The VDM
The VDM concept is the ability to work with
a range of slurry densities to support and
stabilise the excavated face. Similar to a mix
shield TBM, a designed confinement
Figure 6: Mixshield and VDM chamber comparison
pressure is regulated through a pressurised
air bubble to support the excavated face
accurately. The VDM can thus utilise a
higher density slurry in locations with low
confinement or a high probability of a path
PROJECT REPORT
to surface. Using a higher density slurry with
a corresponding higher viscosity minimises
the risk of slurry egress as the higher
viscosity slows the liquid due to increased
shear making it relatively harder for the
liquid to reach the surface at the designed
confinement pressure. A graphic of this is
illustrated in Figure 4.
Material is transported from the
pressurised excavation chamber via a screw
conveyor similar to an EPBM. However the
screw does not act to reduce the support
pressure from the front like an EPBM, this is
due to the slurryfier box which is integral to
the slurry circuit and remains pressurised at
all times during operation. As the material is
discharged from the screw into the slurrifier
box it is diluted as it is mixed with slurry
from four injection pipes. It then passes
through a crusher and on to the Slurry
Treatment Plant at the surface.
Unlike a Mixshield TBM there is no dive
wall as this has been replaced with a screw,
as such a different form of communication
for the bubble pressure is required. This is
achieved using a pipe as depicted in Figure
6. The pipe has a non-return propeller which
constantly supplies slurry from the working
chamber to the excavation chamber to stop
excavated material getting into it and
blocking the communication, as such a
minimum bentonite feed volume needs to
be injected during excavation. Otherwise the
confinement control is the same as a
Mixshield TBM utilising a pressure regulation
system, in Herrenknecht’s case these are
supplied by Sampson.
High density slurry can be injected into the
excavation chamber from a holding tank on
the TBM back up supplied from surface, this
is used to fill voids and stabilise the face
around the TBM. The excavation face
density is measured using a radioactive
densometer which tests a pumped sample
from the excavation chamber, the
information is then provided to the pilot.
During excavation some slurry is passed to
the excavation chamber via the
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 17
 PROJECT REPORT
communication pipe as previously discussed,
however there are also a series of slurry
ports on the cutterhead similar to the foam
injection ports on an EPBM, polymers can
be added to the slurry to aid dispersion if
required. The flow from the communication
pipe and the cutterhead ports makes up the
total slurry directed to the excavation
chamber - called the bentonite injection
ratio - the flow is divided by the excavated
material volume; this is selected by the
operator based on the density readings from
the face. The higher the density face
readings the higher the flow of bentonite
added, equally the lower the density the
lower the volume of bentonite added. This
can be set semi-automatically through the
PLC or controlled manually by the Pilot.
In practice
The two TBMs, S988 and S989, were
procured from Herrenknecht, with an
external diameter of 7.41m, weighing in at
around 400T. The Mixshield TBM, S988,
with a drive power of 1280kW was named
‘Athena’. The VDM, S989 with a drive
power of 1920kW, (to facilitate EPB mode)
was called ‘Zhi Nu’. Both were named as
part of a TBM naming competition amidst
all primary and secondary students in Hong
Kong, organised by the MTR Corporation.
Two different density modes of excavation
were proposed by DBJV; a Low Density
mode where slurry is supplied via the slurry
circuit in the manner of a Mixshield TBM
(roughly 1.05-1.20T/m3), and a High Density
18 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
mode that took the TBM to the lower
boundary of an EPBM where the density in
the excavation chamber was limited to
1.50T/m3. Above 1.50T/m3 a full switch to
EPB mode is required including foam
conditioning to prevent plugging inside the
cutter head and installation of a conveyor
belt for spoil mucking out.
Due to the complexity and risk, it was
agreed to use the Bouygues TP in house
Mobydic system of cutter head
instrumented discs based on previous
successful experiences on West Island Line
Contract 703. Hard material such as a rock
interface shows up extremely well as
green/red, with soft CDG seen as blue. Any
hard/steel/concrete in the face will also be
highlighted and allow the TBM crew to stop
tunnelling for further discussion with senior
management.
As Exhibition Station excavation was yet
to be completed and removal at Admiralty
Station was not possible, all the TBMs were
designed to be stripped out from inside the
tunnel with a cast in-situ lining placed inside
the sacrificial shield skin. This necessitated
the procurement of four cutterheads and
shield bodies with the components being
reused for each, as a value engineering
proposal the VDM main bearing and drive
will be installed in the West DT TBM in
order to accelerate the programme further.
All of the TBMs were delivered by sea
using barges; this brought several key
benefits, namely that the shields could be
delivered in halves with the tail skin and
cutter head delivered complete, also the
gantries were pre-assembled. This not only
brings advantages to the assembly
programmes, but also improves the site
safety with more works completed in the
Herrenknecht factory in Nansha, China, not
to mention quality control with more
welding completed in factory conditions
rather than on site.
Mixshield TBM “Athena” was launched
on her first drive, the 673m long East UT, on
the 21st of March 2016 and averaged
7.6m/day. The drive was successfully
completed on the 9th of July 2016 some
four weeks ahead of the target programme.
After completing the UT, she was stripped
out of the tunnel and relocated to the
western tunnel launch site by barge. The
West UT tunnel excavation commenced on
the 8th of March 2017 and was completed
on the 25th of May 2017, some 11 weeks
ahead of the target programme. She will be
disassembled for the last time in order to
excavate the final West DT tunnel, which is
planned to commence in Sept 2017.
VDM “Zhi-nu” started her excavation of
the East DT tunnel on the 23rd of August
2016, and averaged 8.3m/day. The drive
was successfully completed on the 28th of
November 2016 some 6.5 weeks ahead of
the target programme. The operation of the
VDM required the pilots to adapt and
enhance their piloting skills. Monitoring the
excavation chamber density and screw
speed is critical to ensuring the face remains
stable without losses to surface.
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 PROJECT REPORT

Furthermore, it was found the slurrifier box

must be closely monitored; an increase in
pressure can indicate a blockage at the
crusher, which could cause damage to the
TBM if left unchecked.

Obstructions
Overcoming Steel H or reinforced concrete
pile obstructions during TBM excavation is
possible but very complex, time-consuming
and high risk due to repetitive CAI being
required for said removal and/or cutter
head repair. This is compounded when in
shallow ground cover and in close
proximity to major utilities and/or
structures such as highway bridges, box
culvert, trunk sewers etc., due to the
increased settlement caused.
The Contract Geotechnical Baseline
Report identified known obstructions
clashing with the tunnel alignment; Table 1
shows the pile foundation to be removed.
The most challenging pile removal was
associated with the Canal Road Flyover. A
specialised plant setup was utilised to
overcome the 4m headroom restriction.
The pile removal associated with the

Temporary flow diversion at Canal

Table 1: List of pile foundation to be removed Road Box Culvert

Location Obstruction to be removed Site Constraints undertakers were again asked to verify their
9 nos. of Dia. 600mm structures, as well as the Emergency
Percival Street Limited Space / Ordnance Disposal Unit (EOD) of the Hong
Bored Piles with 8mm
Footbridge Underground Utilities Kong Police Force.
casing
The concern regarding ordinance was
21 nos. of 18” Square Limited Space / especially valid. As recently as 2014 the
Canal Road Box EOD disarmed a 2000lb American bomb at
Driven Concrete Underground Utilities / Dry
culvert Happy Valley, a relatively short distance
Pre-stressed Pile Season Limited
from the tunnel alignments in Wan Chai.
6 nos. of 18” Square Limited Space / On discussion with the EOD, they stated
Canal Road the probability that the TBMs would hit any
Driven Concrete Pre- Close Highway Structures /
Flyover large ordnance was very low but that boxes
stressed Pile (raking) Height Restriction
of small ordnance had been lost into the
1 nos. of Dia. 600mm Limited Space / harbour during WWII.
Wan Shing Street A previous geophysical survey at Marsh
in-situ concrete bored Underground
Footbridge Road had yielded some indication of a
pile (abandoned) Utilities
possible sheet pile left in place next to a
Wan Chai West 24 nos. of Driven steel Storm Water Drain and some recent photos
Limited Space of some neighboring construction again
Treatment Plant H-Pile
indicated the possibility that some sheet
3 nos. of Dia. 500mm Driven Limited Space / piles had been left in place along the
Fleet Arcade Concrete Piles with Underground alignments. In light of this, multiple
19mm thick Casing Utilities methods, namely Borehole Magnetism,
Electromagnetism, Electric CylinderTM and
Cross Hole Electrical Resistivity Tomography,
Canal Road Box Culvert required a full Unforeseen Obstructions were progressed which confirmed that
diversion of the existing culvert flow Due to the criticality of the tunnelling works there were two obstructions at a depth
based upon the Hydraulic Analysis for not only to the Project opening date but between +3 to -25mPD within the TBM
both wet and dry seasonal conditions. also the main road networks and excavation profile.
This was to define the work sequence infrastructure on Hong Kong Island, At this point, the UT TBM drive was due
required to construct the pile removal exhaustive checking was required to ensure to arrive at the location within two weeks,
platform and reinstate that the possibility of encountering any with the later DT TBM arriving within a
The known obstructions were all obstruction was minimised. Aerial photo further two months. A trial pit was opened
removed, according to the planned records of the reclamation and and the storm drain diverted to confirm that
sequence, on time prior to the TBM developments were scrutinised, all a series of square concrete pre-cast piles
arrival. government departments and utilities with steel shoes were in place beneath the

20 TUNNELLING JOURNAL

storm drain. No record of these piles could
be found, however it has been hypothesised
that they were installed to avoid excessive
settlement to the storm drain during the
long process of consolidation in the
reclamation, as the drains were installed
shortly after its completion.
As the UT tunnel was excavated through a
stiff CDG, DBJV proposed to disconnect the
two piles from the pile cap and then drive
through the piles with TBM. The UT TBM
bored through both concrete piles
successfully with both pile shoes recovered.
The bore through option was not viable for
the shallow DT drive due to the presence of
marine deposit and fill material, these would
destabilise due to the TBM forces on the
piles with a high probability of collapse. As
such, both the piles were extracted using a
novel jacking method; this was completed
safely and in time to allow the DT TBM to
pass.
Wan Shing Street was the most critical
tunnel section as it had the shallowest
ground cover at circa 6.5m with the
adoption of the alternative alignment. Any
obstruction encountered under Wan Shing
Street had a great potential to cause slurry
egress, excessive settlement or collapse
compounded by the undesirable geology
making CAI impossible without significant
ground treatment. On top of this, twin
trunk sewers sit approximately 900mm
below the TBM alignment, and although
the design check proved there would be no
adverse impact to the sewer pipe, the team
wanted to minimise the duration the TBM
was loading these sewers.
Although no foundations were expected
in this area, it had been noted that other
works had recently progressed and that the
excavations used sheetpiles for temporary
support. As a result, additional geophysics
deep trial trenches were excavated locating
more than 100 sheetpiles and steel
obstructions found clashing with the DT
tunnel alignment. With the adoption of a
temporary traffic management scheme, all
left-in sheet piles were removed just prior to
the arrival of the DT TBM. As stated earlier
it serves well to check and check again,
including recent activities.
It should be noted that both the unforeseen
obstructions were located to the east
affecting the two most critical drives. During
the course of the east DT TBM excavation
approximately 5T of odd steel parts were
recovered from the STP belt magnet including
ordnance (a shell and some shot), old ship
nails, and plane parts, thankfully nothing too
large was encountered.
Underpinning
During the course of the works, three
flyovers supporting major roads in and
around the Cross Harbour Tunnel required
underpinning. Canal Road Flyover had to
have six supporting piles removed; and
underpinning with new pre-bored H piles. A
pilecap and robust temporary steel
supporting frame with an adjustable
hydraulic jacking system was put in place in
order ensure the TBM drives did not affect
the structures. Throughout these works the
traffic flow had to remain constant.
The jacking system provided control in
three directions: vertical, longitudinal and
transverse effectively confining the structure
during all work stages. Very minor
movements were observed during all work
stages which were well within design
estimation and structures serviceability. The
entire set up has now been removed with
the flyover piers reinstated without any
impact to the traffic flow.
Hung Hing Road Flyover and Causeway
Wan Shing Street
was the most critical
tunnel section as it
had the shallowest
ground cover at circa
6.5m with the adoption
of the alternative
alignment. Any
obstruction encountered
under Wan Shing
Street had a great
potential to cause slurry
egress, excessive
settlement or collapse
compounded by the
geology
Flyover are separate bridge structures with a
longitudinal movement joint without a
barrier between the traffic lanes. Any
differential vertical movement would create
a longitudinal step between Hung Hing
Road Flyover and Causeway Flyover; this
could affect road safety for motorists.
Extensive ground treatment was completed
to improve the stiffness of the ground in
order to limit movement for the at-grade
section. As the foundation of the jacking
system was affected by the TBM excavation
and was expected to move, an additional
precaution was adopted above the ADMS
and manual survey monitoring. The
hydraulic pressure was agreed to be kept at
a safety margin as defined by the designer
to ensure the loading of the bridges are
evenly distributed to the ground.
Better than expected settlement results
because of the VDM, high quality ground
treatment and stringent control of the
jacking system limited the movement to the
CF to approximately 5mm or 8% of the
PROJECT REPORT
movement predicted by the structural
analysis.
Conclusions
Tunnelling projects evolve over time to cater
for the unforeseen, along with new
technologies and ideas. We should
proactively examine new ideas and should
do as much as we can to eliminate risk, not
just to benefit the projects we construct but
to minimise the impact to all parties.
The key changes, proposed by DBJV, to
the launch shaft to the east meant these
tunnels completed 19 and 12 months
ahead of the tender programme, a
significant amount of time in which to deal
with any unforeseen adversity. There were
also added environmental benefits as this
drastically reduced the cut and cover
section. Raising the East UT drive and
lowering the East DT drive created real
benefits from an engineering perspective,
TBM management and contract safety.
The adoption of the new mark of VDM
was a great success, as were the
modifications made from the initial Kuala
Lumpur concept. The tunnel was completed
successfully within the predicted settlement
and without damage to any third part
structures or utilities. Most importantly,
there was no adverse impact to the busy
traffic of east Wan Chai, which is in excess
of 115,000 vehicular movements every day.
The in-depth investigations allowed the
team to locate two sets of significant
obstructions to the east; further
investigations were progressed to the west
with no additional obstructions found. With
the shallow cover in the east, hitting these
obstructions would have caused significant
problems for the TBM excavation with a
high probability of a collapse or worse.
It is also critical to ensure that the Slurry
Treatment Plant procured does not limit the
TBM advance as not only hard rock can
slow the TBM advance. The possible fines to
be encountered should also be reviewed
closely and it is suggested a conservative
view adopted to uprate the waste mud
processing capability, this is after all a small
cost compared to full TBM tunnelling
operations costs.
The ethos of a ‘Can Do’ spirit allows
MTRC to closely partner with the
contractors constructing the new lines in
Hong Kong, DBJV being a prime example,
adapting to changes and adversity whilst at
the same time taking on board value
engineering to better secure the success of
the projects be it justifiable from a safety,
quality, programme or cost benefit view.
This has been proven time and again during
the construction of the five major metro
projects from West Island Line, opened on
time in 2014, to Shatin to Central Link,
planned to open in two stages in 2019 and
2021.
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 21
Technology for underground construction.
Alkali-free set accelerators for shotcrete
Products for mechanized tunneling: foaming agents
for soil conditioning, polymers, sealants, lubrificants
Learn more on utt.mapei.com
Products for grouting and consolidating
Products for concrete repairing, protection and coating
Products for waterproofing: synthetic waterproofing membranes,
waterproofing accessories

Monitoring
Progress
Better ways of collecting and using data on
tunnelling projects are fast-forwarding problem
solving and decision making. Though we’re still
at the bottom of a steep learning curve, some are
already reaping the benefits. By Kristina Smith.
AT THE START OF A TUNNEL DRIVE, while
the TBM is still being assembled and the crew
is getting the feel of the machine, common
sense tells us that there are likely to be more
leaks than later in the drive. But could you say
how many more leaks are likely? Twice as
many, five times as many, ten times?
Seli Tunneling Denmark, now part of the
Salini Impregilo Group, knows exactly what
the impact of a tricky launch procedure was
for the twin tunnels on Copenhagen’s new
Cityringen line. Because it pinpointed every
leak and repair in the 15.5km tunnels with the
help of data management software TPC from
Tunnelsoft, part of the Babendererde Group.
“We made our client very happy,” says
Valerio Violo, CEO of Seli Tunneling Denmark.
“There are 31km of tunnels; that’s a lot of
segments and data to be on top of.” As well
as tracking the few repairs required, the
system allowed each one of the 22,500 rings
to be inspected and signed off far faster than
usual and removed the need for huge
amounts of paper records.
But the data also told Seli DK something
about the launch process. “It proved that you
need to launch the TBM in the best possible
conditions,” says Violo. “We launched in a
very small shaft, the machine was not fully
assembled, we had to mine half a ring, stop,
empty the buckets, stopping and starting all
the time. That can potentially decrease the
quality of the first few metres of tunnel. We
recorded a higher number of leakages in the
first metres, with numbers decreasing
substantially as we went on and improved our
processes and completed the TBM
assembly.”At their best, systems such as TPC
not only free up time for supervisors and
engineers to think, understand and act, they
flag up problems early, reveal patterns of
behaviour and give pointers as to how things
could be done better next time. There are
several such systems around, with varying
focusses and functions, including London
Bridge Associates’ Tunnel Information
Management (TIM), Maxwell Geosystem’s
Mission OS and Sixense’s Geoscope.
The next step will be to take the data
collected during the construction phase and
use it to help the owner operate and
maintain its asset more effectively. Hand-in- up their skills. For example, we could see
hand with that approach will be a
monitoring regime which continues from
Figure 1: Layout of Copenhagen’s Cityringen project
construction through to maintenance.
Handing over construction data to a client and tries to hide the short cuts and mistakes
may seem like an unnatural thing for a
contractor to do. For Violo, who was
contractually bound to do so on Cityringen,
it’s a positive move: “I think it’s good. We
need to get as far away as possible from the
dichotomy of the contractor doing things and
MONITORING
keeping them hidden and the client trying to
find out,” says Violo. “I think sharing
information is a good way to work.”
Cityringen’s segments
Though Violo had worked with TPC software
before, the Copenhagen project was the first
time he had used the Segment Tracker
function. The segments had to travel from
Northern Germany to Copenhagen, via two
ports; Seli DK worked with Tunnelsoft and
Dropbox to create a paperless tracking and
recording system that fitted with the
workflow and the sign-offs and checks
needed all the way from factory to final
inspection and acceptance.
Seli DK opted to use iPods to scan barcodes
on the segments and to take photos where
necessary, with scans taking place at different
points of the segments’ journey creating a
complete record for each segment when
installed. Looking at statistical information
related to defects provides really useful
information which can be used to make
changes and improve quality during the
tunnel drive, says Violo:
“On a very long project you have employee
turnover, and the new people have to build
through the distribution of damage to the
ring, there was a small increase in cracks
which coincided with
when the erector operator
had resigned and his
deputy had replaced him.
We could work out what
was happening, talk to
him and provide extra
training if it was needed.”
Initial concerns among
the workforce about ‘Big
Brother’ style monitoring
were overcome when
people realise the benefits,
says Violo: “When you see
from the data that there’s
something that can be
improved, it’s very
important to talk about it.
We show them the graph
and we talk about it.
Sometimes the operator
comes and ask us for the
graph because he wants
to understand what
happened at a certain
point. It’s a tool to help
them to do a better job.
“The old way of doing
tunnelling is that the worker digs the tunnel
from the manager, whose job it is to find
where the mistakes have been hidden. This
way of working removes all that wasted
effort.”
Babendererde engineers began developing
TPC (Tunnel Processing Control) software in
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 23
 MONITORING

TPC mobile application (top) and
detailed condition report (bottom)
2004 and since its launch in 2005, it’s been
used on around 50 projects. Current projects
include the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement
tunnel in Seattle, the LA Regional Connector,
Sydney’s Northwest Rail Link, Santa Lucia
tunnel in Italy and the Semmering Base Tunnel
in Austria.
Tunnelsoft has made many improvements
to TPC over the years, with recent upgrades
including improvements to its mobile app to
provide more functions, access to specific
points of instrumentation via GIS (geographic
information system) and enhanced security.
“Everybody wants to use their smart
phones for everything,” says Karen Simon,
marketing and sales for Tunnelsoft. “We are
the only ones that have programmed specific
apps for mobile devices. Our software is
probably the best on the market for using on
smartphones.”
The ability to use smartphones has all kinds
of benefits, says Violo. For instance, when the
crew needs input from a supervisor in the
night, the supervisor can check parameters via
their phone and may be able to provide a
solution and advice remotely, rather than
jumping into a car, having just woken up, and
driving to site.
Another useful feature of the TPC system is
that alarms can be delivered through
smartphones. So, for example, on Cityringen,
during stoppages the TBM operator would be
alerted if the pressure in the bentonite tank
fell below a predetermined level; bentonite
was used to maintain face pressure during
stoppages.
According to Simon some customers don’t
expect to spend any time initially in setting up
the software, which can be a problem for
Tunnelsoft. This is a false economy of time,
though, according to Violo:
“The set up time should not scare us, the
more time we can invest in setting up, the
better,” he says. “When we recognised we
needed more information in TPC, we added it
in. For example, we asked for the frequency
inverter on the machine to be available via the
phone.”
Violo says that he will definitely use TPC
and the Segment Tracker function again. One
development he and his team would like to
see is an automatic analysis of the defect data
for the segments; in Copenhagen this was
done manually.
Another development would be to
integrate the instrumentation and monitoring
into TPC. “We started at the beginning to
integrate the two systems but that didn’t
happen this time. Instead we just linked
them,” says Violo.
Glasgow Shieldhall
Tunnel Information Management – TIM – is
the brainchild of London Bridge Associates’
(LBA) Ken Spiby. “I’ve always been interested
in the data we generate and how poorly we
use it. We had been talking about this for
quite a long time but it took a while to
develop the simplest, best-value solution.
“The basic premise of TIM is that if you
know what’s going on you can do something
TIM is the brainchild of London Bridge
Associates’ Ken Spiby (pictured on the left)
about it. In general tunnel projects are staffed
by intelligent people who realise when there
are problems and work out what to do about
them. What TIM does is to get you there
more quickly.”
At the very least, using TIM saves time.
Digital data from plant and machinery is fed in
to TIM and linked to manually-inputted data
as things happen. Reports and alarms are
generated automatically and information can
be viewed on almost any internet-connected
device, anywhere and at any time.
All critical path tasks are given a code so
that re-occurring issues are easily identified
and analysed.
“Traditionally the shift engineer writes their
shift report at the end of the shift and then
distributes it, which means that the
management team gets the information at
least 12 hours after the event,” says Spiby.
LBA developed the system with software
developers Commercial Applications
Company and piloted it on the National Grid
London Power Tunnels with the Costain-
Skanska joint venture. The initial version
focussed on EPB TBM production, with more
modules added subsequently: quality

Precision Liquid Settlement Array between the sensor at the point of

RST Instrument’s Precision Liquid
Settlement Array provides
wireless, real-time remote
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heave for applications such as
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The arrays, which come in a
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Users have real-time access
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logger.

24 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
 Teach Tomorrow,
buildings will be

me.
self-evolving.
Today, we design
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TUNNELLING JOURNAL 25
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26 TUNNELLING JOURNAL

London Bridge Associates’ Tunnel Information Management (TIM) system is
seeing widespread use on underground construction projects
management; open-face shield drives; sprayed
concrete lined tunnels; resource management;
and slurry machines.
Chris Gannon, tunnel agent for the
Costain-Vinci Construction Grands Projets JV
on Scottish Water’s Shieldhall Tunnel project
in Glasgow, is on his third project to make
use of TIM. Prior to Glasgow, he used it on
the London Power Tunnels and the
Manchester Trunk Project in Eccles for
United Utilities.
“It’s a live system: the production team
has live tracking of what the machine is
doing,” says Gannon. “It’s a very clear and
precise way of monitoring and you can
react to live situations. In the past we would
have been scrambling around with bar
charts and Excel sheets, now the
information’s all there, captured and
presented. It takes massive pressure off the
engineering team and allows us to go and
build the tunnel.”
TIM helps with safety management too,
says Gannon: “It allows us to track key
Sixense, formerly known as Soldata, has an array of tools
for monitoring data that work in Geoscope, shown here
points in the tunnel drive where
we need to do maintenance to safety-
critical components such as lifting
equipment or wear parts.” Particularly
useful in Glasgow’s varied ground
conditions, Costain-Vinci are using TIM to
map production versus geological data.
It’s important to communicate the system
to the tunnelling team in a positive way,
says Gannon. “Naturally, people are
defensive if they see that someone is
reporting on them all the time. It’s quite
interesting to see. We explain that we are
reporting fact, not with emotion and the
more information they feed into the reports,
the more factual it is, there’s nothing to
hide.
“The skill of the engineering team is to
get the buy in of the supervisors and
department managers.”
LBA and Commercial Applications
Company are now developing their
segment documentation system to cover
factory manufacture. Spiby has no
immediate ambition to incorporate the
processing of instrumentation and
monitoring data into TIM.
“Monitoring processing is already
well-catered for by other parts of
the market,” he says, “and we can
pull the processed results into our
system for holistic analysis and
reporting, without the need to
import the raw data.”
“We don’t want it to get
too big,” says Gannon.
“There’s already a vast
amount of information that
we put into it.” Each project
can choose the modules it
requires and who can access
which area of data.
Expanding horizons
There’s still work to be done
on what the best way is to
MONITORING
marshal and present all the
information from a tunnelling project.
Information platforms initially developed for
monitoring and instrumentation and
expanding to present other data too.
“There is always more and more data,”
says Matthieu Bourdon, technical manager
of Sixense, formerly Soldata. “Now we are
asked to use data from different domains
such as TBM data. It makes sense to have all
the information in one place. If you’re
looking for volume loss from the TBM, you
want to see what’s happening with
settlements on the surface at the same
time.”
As well as TBM data, Sixense has added a
GIS module to its information management
system Geoscope which provides relevant
information from different sources linked to
a particular point; that could include laser
scanning, ground radar and satellite
monitoring. Other extra streams of data
come from environmental monitoring, such
as noise and vibration.
Maxwell GeoSystems is currently re-
engineering the scope of its web-based
Mission OS platform. “We want to put
control into the hands of our clients,” says
director Angus Maxwell. “The monitoring
side is now completely configurable so that
the user can define any number of data
objects with data fields and internal
calculations. These can be part of calculated
relationships with other objects, including
predictions from numerical analyses.
“Now we are focussing on linking
construction data to our online shift
reporting in the same way. With this in
place, our clients can design their own
systems and adapt to any kind of data so
that it can be linked together in ways that
are useful.”
Maxwell mentions data from MissionOS
shift reporting modules, data logged
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 27
 MONITORING
machines such as TBMs, drill jumbos and
road headers, shotcrete information,
borehole data and information from 3D
geological and numerical modelling
software such as Aranz Geo’s Leapfrog. “We
want to promote a machine learning type of
approach where we can evaluate
performance as we go along and learn from
it in pseudo real time.” The new version of
Mission OS is now being used for the first
time in the UK on the Central Contract of
the Thames Tideway project.
Sixense has ambitions to move beyond
the construction phase to integrate more
data across the while lifecycle of an asset.
Soldata’s name change to Sixense signalled a
consolidation of the instrumentation and
monitoring part of the group with 10 other
companies which provide services in
diagnostics and maintenance of assets and
digital platforms.
“By becoming Sixense, we have lots of
different software in the company and the
idea is to merge them together – software
for inspection, to review the site after
construction, project management tools,”
explains Bourdon. “And there are more
digital platforms like Geoscope that could be
merged with it to provide a full picture of
the asset through its whole life.”
There is an appetite among asset owners
to have a more joined-up approach to
Sixense at work in Paris, left, and on the Bucharest Metro, right
capturing and using data. Speaking at the
launch of Senceive’s new Nano and Nano+
wireless tri-axial tilt sensors in May, HS2’s
asset management director Mark Morris
spoke of the project’s aspirations for a
“reliability-centred maintenance approach”;
whole life costing and condition monitoring
would play an important part of the tender
process, he said.
“I want the suppliers to provide kit with
open architecture that we can plug and play
and put into the internet of things,” he said.
“Be innovative, be collaborative, come up
with solutions and don’t stick to the
prescriptive minimum for pieces of kit.”
Instrumentation and monitoring specialists
have long argued that monitoring strategies
that encompass both construction and
operation would allow us to better
understand and maintain assets. “If you
leave the instrumentation in the works, you
have the continuity, you can see how the
immediate performance deteriorates over
28 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
Addressable
Vibrating Wire
Interface
Geokon has launched a new Addressable
Vibrating Wire Interface, model 8020-30,
designed to link vibrating wire sensors on a
single four-conductor cable, using the
Modbus RTU (remote terminal unit)
communication protocol over an RS-485
connection. It can be used to reduce cable
runs in multipoint systems, incremental
extensometers, and for applications where
many sensor cables might compromise a
grout or cement bond.
According to Geokon, the system features
state-of-the-art signal conditioning and
time and see its relation to other factors,”
says Maxwell.
“There’s an appetite from asset owners to
link up construction monitoring with asset
management,” says ITM Monitoring’s bid
manager Rhiannon Walker. “The reason we
have not seen it happen is commercial.
When contracts are procured, we are
working initially with the project manager or
cost consultants. As the project moves into
construction, we might
get novated to the main
contractor. But when
the contractor has
finished the main works
and finished the fit out,
the question is: who
pays for the asset
management
monitoring?”
“It’s been an ongoing
discussion for years,”
says Bourdon. “But there is always a
contractual problem.” Sixense recently had
to remove all its equipment from an asset it
had been monitoring for several years and
then reinstall it in order to monitor the
effect of a nearby development. “The
lawyers could not find a solution to keep it
ongoing and transfer the contract to the
developer,” explains Bourdon.
There are examples of continuity in some
parts of the infrastructure sector. Bridges for
example; Sixense installed a complex
monitoring system for design-builder Vinci
Construction Grands Projets on the
construction of the Rion Antirion Bridge in
Greece, leaving some of it in place after
completion to monitor structural elements
designed to deal with seismic events.
Highways authorities, such as in the UK and
Romania, are also looking at global
monitoring strategies.
This is one aspect that Transport for
London is trying to address through its
digital addressing to accommodate up to 100
sensors along one common cable. The pre-
fabricated trunk cable has cable splitters
installed at locations close to the gauge
locations which contain the necessary
vibrating wire and thermistor circuitry to
excite and read each sensor.
Readings are accessed, or designated, by
their unique Modbus addresses. Systems can
be configured with sensor cables and trunk
cables cut to length and moulded at Geokon,
or they can be provided with connectors for
assembly in the field.
Value Enhancement Specialist Services
Framework announced earlier this year.
Among ten firms in the framework, which
will work on station upgrade projects for
the next seven to eight years, are two
instrumentation and monitoring specialist
ITM Monitoring and Bedi Consulting, as
well as LBA.
“We will all work together during the
design stage of a capacity upgrade, to
incorporate all the right design elements
including monitoring to ensure that we
keep as many assets open as possible
during construction and that we have an
intelligent asset at the end of it,” says
Walker. “It is the first framework I have seen
that ties together construction monitoring
and whole life asset monitoring.”
Analysts not engineers
Inevitably the march of Big Data, and our
increasing ability to mine it and apply it to
projects will impact on the skills and
resources required to run major tunnelling
projects. “Resource-wise, it could certainly
mean that you have a smaller engineering
team because you have more confidence in
keeping track of your tunnel dynamics,”
says Gannon.
There’s a question-mark over what the
role of the junior engineer might be. If data
is being collected and processed
automatically, experience will be necessary
in interpreting and understanding it.
It’s not surprising then that firms such as
Arup are looking to recruit graduates with
analytical skills and qualifications. “We need
specialists within a project who are able to
manage Big Data and bring it all together
so that its brought to bear on tendering,
assessing risk, to do analysis on a forensic
level,” says Maxwell. “Construction
companies need analysts whose job is to
take all this information and use it to look
for opportunities to do things better.”
 MONITORING

Testing Smart Segments in

HONG KONG
Development and acceptance of steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC)
segmental lining requires an accurate understanding of the performance of
the segments under real load conditions. An innovative instrumentation
scheme has been implemented at the Liantang Lung Shan highway tunnels
in Hong Kong to evaluate the load distribution in the segments during
erection and tunnelling and for comparison with the design assumptions
obtained by numerical simulations. X. Monin, R. Storry, and G. Steiner, all
of Dragages Hong Kong, A Maxwell, Maxwell Geosystems, and S. Sparrow,
Global Sensing Solutions, here present the development of the
instrumentation, the installation methods and initial data obtained.

AN R&D PROJECT was implemented by
Dragages Hong Kong and Bouygues Travaux
Publics at the Liantang Lung Shan highway
tunnels project in Hong Kong to study the
structural behaviour of the steel fibre
reinforced concrete segmental lining and to
evaluate the distribution of loads in the
segments in order to confirm design
assumptions used in numerical simulations.
A comparison between numerical and
experimental results will be carried out to
assess the effectiveness of the adopted
numerical model in predicting the behaviour
of segmental lining under a thrust load
simulating the effect of the TBM machine
during excavation. Monitoring data enabling
a comparison to be made between
conventionally reinforced concrete and steel
fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) segments was
also obtained for similar analysis.
The monitoring instrumentation was
developed to record strain developed in the
segment due to the segment handling, TBM
thrust and the annular void grouting/ground
loads.
Segment reinforcement ratio is generally
defined during design by the
grout/ground/TBM thrust loads hence, the
strain gauges were positioned where it was
predicted that the maximum strain would be
developed due to these loads.
Prior to the development of the monitoring
system several important criteria were defined
which needed to be considered by the system
developer; one of the most important Instrumentation
development criteria considered was to be Instrumentation using conventional vibrating
able to obtain data as soon as the TBM thrust wire strain gauges, multiplexer, datalogger
pads are in contact with the segment and and battery would be impossible to embed in
before the vacuum erector is removed. the concrete due to the size of the elements.
Literature studies indicated that previous The power consumption of vibrating wire
segment monitoring schemes have not been strain gauges would require big batteries
able to capture this window of data. Due to which are also not convenient to embed
access restriction during segment erection, the within the segments. Collecting data through
difficulty to plug cables to segments when the a multiplexor would also prevent synchronous
erector pad is still on the segment and also data reading at the frequency required.
the inconvenience of having
cables running in the tunnel
that can be damaged by the Figure 1: Foil strain gauges and strain gauge
traffic (TBM, MSV, cable module (SGM)
bracket installation…),
wireless monitoring seemed
the most appropriate
technology to pursue.
Other factors to be taken
into consideration during
the development were the
positioning of the
instrument components, so
as not to adversely affect
the data obtained (i.e.
affecting stress distribution
within the concrete or
introducing artificial lines of
weakness within the
segment), together with the
frequency of monitoring
and the duration of
monitoring.

30 TUNNELLING JOURNAL

Foil strain gauges (Figure 1) were
considered as they are resistive and can be
recorded at a higher frequency than
vibrating wire gauges. Such gauges are
commonly used for concrete testing and to
monitor the performance of structures.
However, these gauges are susceptible to
variable signal loss in cabling and this is
why measuring vibrating wire instruments
in the frequency domain is often preferred.
A new method which samples a resistor /
capacitor time constant rather than simple
voltage allows conversion of analogue
sensor direct to microstrain without being
affected by line losses. This new electronic
arrangement requires much less power and
therefore a smaller logging unit and power
supply. As a result the system works on
regular batteries (8.5Ah battery C cell size,
Figure 2).
An application was developed to
communicate with the datalogger via
Bluetooth and to download data. The
application also enabled the data sampling
rates to be configured on site and to
manually read temperature, battery
condition and strain gauge conditions.
Figure 2: Data logging module (DLM)
The key points of the custom
development were as follows:
1 The design used a very low-power
strain gauge coupled with an RS485
transceiver.
2 The sensor nodes comprised 3 x ¼
bridge strain gauges.
3 The strain gauges were temperature
compensated.
4 The strain gauges were wired directly to
a nearby module containing signal
conditioning circuitry and
microprocessor.
5 The wiring configuration was designed
such that there would be independent
channels providing redundant paths to
all strain gauge modules. The system
was designed so that there would be
no single point of failure. In the event
that one of the digital strain gauges
failed it would not impact the ability to
obtain data from the remaining. One
additional channel was available to
access the crackmeter data (Figure 3).
6 Power to the sensor nodes is
controlled by the data logger
component and are only powered
while readings are being taken.
7 The data-logger batteries should last
180 days (D-Cell battery with 8.5Ah
rating) with the logging schedule
envisaged.
8 The 2Gb memory card can store nearly
4 years of data at a sample rate of
1sample/10s.
9 Integrated Bluetooth wireless module
with range up to 30 metres (line of
sight).
10 Data can also be retrieved via a USB
cable if necessary.
11 All equipment is sealed against
moisture and corrosion.
Figure 3: Segment cabling schematic
During the development stage a flexural
test on a steel fibre reinforced concrete
beam was performed to confirm that the
proposed strain gauge solution would
provide reliable results. The strain gauge
module and three strain gauges were
embedded inside the concrete beam and
worked satisfactorily for the duration of
the test (Figure 4).
Figure 4: SFRC beam flexural testing
MONITORING
Figure 5: Principle stress trajectories
The strain gauges (21no. per segment)
were located in the areas where the highest
tension loads were anticipated (Figure 5) and
two crack-metres were installed per segment
on the intrados surface at location where
cracks could develop.
Initially four segments of two SFRC
lining rings and four segments of one
conventionally reinforced lining ring were
instrumented. However, two instrumented
segments did not function when they
arrived on site so ten instrumented
segments were used for field testing and
data collection.
The monitored segments were located on
the upper half of the lining ring to allow
easier access (Figure 8) and at locations
where the rock was foreseen to be good so
allowing more rigorous testing.
Figure 6 a. and b. show the arrangement
of the gauges relative to the thrust ram
contact points on the ring. Three sets of
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 31
 MONITORING
Figure 6a and b: Typical strain gauge arrangement
a. Circumferential strains b. Radial strains.
three gauges were positioned to measure the
circumferential strains in the ring. Two sets
(SGM1 and SGM6) were arranged between
the rams and one (SGM2) and a surface
crack meter were arranged at segment
midpoint directly in front of the thrust rams.
These gauges were positioned at the middle
of the segment thickness to avoid
circumferential bending moments.
Four sets of three gauges SGM3, SGM4,
SGM5 and SGM7 were positioned radially
perpendicular to the circumference and in
the centre of the ring.
Instrument installation
A first stage of installation was done at the
segment precast yard, where all the strain
gauges and strain gauge modules were
embedded in concrete. The datalogger and
the crackmeters were installed at the site in
order to avoid damage during storage and
transportation.
As the SFRC segments only contain a
small amount of conventional reinforcement
a frame was required to position and secure
the strain gauges correctly and to train the
wires to the position of the box out (for the
data logger). The frames were constructed
from 6mm diameter fibre glass bars which
were tied with steel wires to the existing
rebar (Figure 7).
The strain gauges were attached to the
fibreglass GFRP rods with steel wires and
plastic ties. The fibreglass bars have benefits
over a steel frame as fibreglass has a similar
elastic modulus to that of the concrete and
32 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
so will not affect the behaviour
of the SFRC around the strain
gauges.
The monitoring
instrumentation comprised:
• Seven groups of three strain
gauges.
• Seven Strain Gauge Modules.
• Two cables to connect the
crackmeters at the external
surface and 2 cables to
connect the equipment to
the datalogger cast within
the concrete.
• One box embedded into the
concrete to create the
recess where the datalogger
will be installed (on site
Liantang).
The installation procedure was
as follows:
a. Crackmeter lead-wires were
inserted within plastic pipes
connected to the rebars
with cable ties to protect
them during concreting.
Both ends were filled with
silicone sealant. The part
against the mould was
protected with a sponge.
Figure 7: Instruments mounted in-situ
b. Strain gauges were attached to the
GFRP bars at the accurate locations
using a spacer measuring tool. The
position of each strain gauge was
checked and adjusted to the
theoretical position with a tolerance of
±5mm.
c. The instrumentation was tested using
a PC to check that all the components
function correctly prior to concreting.
d. The two cables from SGMs and the
two crackmeter lead-wires were
inserted into the plastic box-out which
was filled with foam and wrapped
with bubble wrap before concreting to
allow easy extraction later.
e. Concreting of the segment was
performed with care in order to avoid
direct dropping of concrete onto the
strain gauges.
f. Demoulding of the segment. Recovery
of the crackmeter cables and cables in
the plastic box-out.
g. The instrumentation was again tested
to check that all the components
functioned correctly.
h. The instrumented segments were
marked on the leading and trailing
edges and on the intrados for
identification.
Lesson learned during installation
The environment in which tunnel lining
segments are fabricated is harsh for
electronics hence, all electronic
components need to be designed for
physical and thermal robustness and
protected against water ingress.
The strain gauges need to be installed
to a high degree of accuracy if the data is
to be meaningful; less than +/-5mm
which is less than tolerance usually
achieved in a precast yard (for rebar
placing for example). The strain gauges
were eventually attached to the GFRP bars
when the cage was inside the mould.
Placing concrete needs to be
performed with care to
avoid forceful dropping or
flowing of concrete
directly onto the
instruments.
All cabling and
electronic components
need to be designed to
resist vibration in a wet
environment. The very
strong vibration of the
segment mould will affect
cabling and electronic
components if these are
not effectively fixed in
place.
Some leakage into the
strain gauge module
(SGM) occurred during the
first trial due to a lack of
sufficient waterproofing.
In order to mitigate this risk posed, the
intensity of the vibration for these
temporary segments was reduced. SGMs
were suspended between rebar by wires
instead of directly attaching them to the
steel rebar to avoid excessive shaking
during the vibration of the mould. The
SGMs were filled with foam to make
them completely waterproof.
Installation second stage
A second stage of installation was
undertaken on site before segment
erection. Here the crack meters were
installed on the segment intrados surface,
the instruments plugged to the data

logger and data logger sealed in the
recess in the segment. A Plexiglas plate
was bolted on top of the data logger
module in order to protect it from the
erector vacuum pressure (around 1bar).
The crackmeter, adapter and crackmeter
wires were covered with duct tape on the
intrados surface to protect them from
damage that could be caused by workers
or the vacuum pad. A plastic cover plate
was used in order to not impact the
Bluetooth communication signal.
Prior to DLM installation, the box-out
for the DLM was removed. Care was
taken to avoid damaging the cables which
protruded from the concrete segment into
the box and were required to remain
intact for connection to the DLM. The
data cables were then fed into the DLM
through a hole with a rubber grommet
located on the bottom of the DLM box.
Once all the data and crackmeter cables
have been inserted and connected in the
DLM, foam has been applied to the cable
entry area and the lid screwed on top. The
foam expanded in the confined space to
form a protective barrier against the
environment.
The unit was powered by 2x8.5Ah “C
Cell sized” batteries. Once switched on,
the DLM reads the internal configuration
and starts operation. The DLM was tested
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The ability to communicate with the data logger
wirelessly was very useful to check that the DLMs
were functioning properly and to change the
configuration as necessary. Unfortunately, at
Bluetooth baud rates data download times were
lengthy which impacted on the efficiency of this
system. It is recommended that future systems use
real time data transfer over wireless mesh networks.
to ensure that it was “reading” all
available SGMs and data could be
downloaded to the tablet.
Once the testing was completed the
DLM lid was fixed and silicon applied
around the edges to provide a water
resistant barrier.
The last step of installation was to
screw the Plexiglas plate on top of the
DLM box. A foam gasket and silicone
sealant was provided between the
Plexiglas plate and concrete in order to
provide an airtight and watertight system.
Application
The original firmware allowed for 10-
second reading cycle. A tablet device with
bespoke application was used to access
and download files from the DLMs. The
application included the ability to:
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MONITORING
• Find all available DLMs,
• Check the DLM status,
• Change the DLM configuration settings,
• Download data files from the DLM,
• Modify the DLM polling schedule,
• Commission the DLM.
The ability to communicate with the
data logger wirelessly was very useful to
check that the DLMs were functioning
properly and to change the configuration
as necessary. Unfortunately, at Bluetooth
baud rates data download times were
lengthy which impacted on the efficiency
of this system. It is recommended that
future systems use real time data transfer
over wireless mesh networks.
Test protocol
The test protocol was predefined and
included several parties: construction,
JACKING
PIPES
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 33
34 TUNNELLING JOURNAL

survey and technical teams.
The load test itself consisted of
increasing the jack pressure and
maintaining the pressure at different
steps. In order to more precisely control
the pressure in the jacks the test was
done in static mode i.e. not in excavation
mode and with the cutterhead not
turning and to avoid damaging the
cutterhead and disc cutters, due to high
contact pressures with the ground, the
cutterhead was retracted. The confinement
pressure was increased in order to be able
to reach high jack pressure values, up to
7.5MN per pad.
TBM data records including thrust loads
and jacks elongation were obtained by the
machines data logging system.
Eccentricities and stepping between
segments within an instrumented ring and
between segments of the instrumented
ring with the adjacent rings, were surveyed
and recorded.
Another important parameter to monitor
was the development of cracks at the
surface of the segments. After each step
the instrumented segments were visually
checked and cracks, if any, recorded and
mapped.
The segment instrumentation logging
schedule was set to the following;
1) First 2 days after erection: one reading
every 10 seconds.
Figure 8: Locations of instrumented segments with analysed segment shown
MONITORING
2) From day 3 to 15: one reading per predominantly in compression. Gauges at
minute. the trailing edge responded most to the
3) From day 16 to 30: two readings per day. grouting pressures.
In term of cracks, segments with
Observations and conclusions conventional reinforcement displayed more
Sensors were installed on four rings within cracking (Figure 9) than the SFRC
the top hemisphere of the ring. One ring segments with the same magnitude of
was conventionally reinforced and the load. This is reflected in the results where
other rings were built with steel fibre the peak tension strains recorded in the RC
reinforcement. In this paper we shall segment were four times those in the SFRC
consider one segment at the 10 o’clock segment. The variation of strain with depth
position (Figure 7) and look at the within the RC segment was 1.5
circumferential strains between the rams; a µstrain/mm whereas in the SFRC segment
location of tensile strains. the strain was more evenly distributed at
The monitoring device was designed to only 0.33 µstrain/mm and with lower
record the first thrust of the jack on the tensile strain.
segment and avoid
cable obstructing the
working area. Figure 9: Cracks on segment (TTR1172)
The global analysis
of the results shows
the expected
behaviour of the
concrete at the
location of the strain
gauges (tension
between and behind
jacking pads both
circumferentially and
radially). This tension
decreases rapidly
towards the trailing
edges which are
The profile in Figure 10 shows that in the
early part of the thrust the tensile strain in
the conventionally reinforced segment
tracks that of the SFRC segment with
tensile strain over applied stress (bar) at
about 0.5 to 0.6. The lower values
correspond to the conventional
reinforcement. At peak thrust pressure
there is a rapid increase in strain in the
conventionally reinforced segment which
reduces as load is removed but not down
to levels expected for the thrust pressures
being applied. The stress strain behaviour
is indicative of concrete cracking. The data
further shows the extent of the cracking
with each gauge showing the same pre
and post failure characteristics to different
extents. The gauges were installed up to
300mm into the concrete and even the
deepest sensor shows the behaviour. This
suggests that cracks during installation
may have propagated well into the
reinforced area of the concrete. The cracks
appear very sensitive to differential
pressure between the two applied jacks
with clear spikes in tensile strains when
one or other jack was unloaded. This may
have stimulated deeper propagation of the
cracks.
The SFRC concrete (Figure 11) was
subjected to stresses 40% higher than the
conventional concrete (240bars) yet shows
no such propagation of cracks.
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 35
 MONITORING

Figure 10: Conventional reinforcement Ring 1172 – Leading Edge Circumferential Tensile Strain (red) against rams thrust
pressure (blue) and grouting pressure (green) - (+ve tension)

Figure 11: Fibre Reinforced concrete re-inforcement 1170 – Leading Edge

Future considerations Circumferential Tensile Strain (red) against rams thrust pressure (blue) and grouting
The data has provided valuable pressure (green) - (+ve tension)
information on the dynamic
behaviour of RC and SFRC
segments during the installation
processes. Future projects may
benefit from attention to the
following:
• Finding mounting solutions to
avoid the use of additional GFRP
bars to attach the strain gauges.
• Minimise as much as possible
work to be done on site (i.e.
install at the precast factory) and
the interaction between workers
and monitoring devices.
• Increase robustness of devices
and cabling to avoid damage
during installation and
concreting.
• Increase the long term water
resistance of all the monitoring
devices.
• Employ remote wireless systems
rather than local Bluetooth to
check the status of the
monitoring from a computer at
the office.

36 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
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 TECHNICAL
Materials design for
tunnel linings
In this article, Dr Benoit Jones of Inbye Engineering
looks at materials design for tunnel linings.
THE MANTRA OF THE MODERNIST
MOVEMENT of the early 20th Century
was “form follows function”. In contrast,
Ashby & Johnson (2014) argue that often,
form is not particularly limited by the
function. A steel structure is likely to be
rectilinear, a concrete shell structure is
likely to be domed, a masonry structure
will be made of discrete blocks, will be
arched or will have limited spans. In civil
engineering, as in product design and
mechanical engineering, we tend to
choose our materials first, then design a
structure. In many cases it is not so much
that “form follows function”, but rather
that “form follows material”.
The concept of ‘materials design’ as
pioneered by Professor Mike Ashby is to
turn this on its head. The designer thinks
about the desired form and features and
searches for the best material to achieve
them. This is not a linear process, and
there is interaction between the choice of
material, the loads and the form (Figure
1). However, the difference between this
process and the usual one is that the
designer keeps an open mind about the
material selection.
Figure 1: Conceptualisation of the design process
Form and features of a tunnel
The form and features of a tunnel will
depend to some degree on its function.
However, apart from requiring a minimum
cross-sectional area (for a water or sewage
conveyance tunnel) or a minimum space
envelope (for pedestrian or traffic tunnels),
the form is not usually restricted such that
38 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
it drives the design. It is quite common,
for instance, to design highway tunnels as
circular, or consisting of one or more
circular arcs, when the space envelope is
often closer to a rectangular shape.
Therefore, “form follows material” seems
to be the case for most tunnels, not “form
follows function”.
Apart from the ability to withstand
stresses and control deformations to
acceptable levels, features that are usually
considered are (e.g. ITA, 1988):
• Watertightness
• Durability
• Fire resistance
• Not harmful to people or to whatever is
transported by the tunnel, and non-toxic
to the ground and groundwater
• Minimise carbon footprint
• Buildability
The first 4 in the list above are pretty
much yes/no answers, where materials can
be ruled in or out. It is not quite that
simple, since aspects such as
watertightness, durability and fire
resistance could be provided by combining
more than one material, as we currently
sometimes do when combining concrete
with sheet membrane
waterproofing. Also, durability
may depend on crack widths,
which depend on structural
response.
Assessing the equivalent CO2
emissions of a material to provide
its carbon footprint is not difficult
nowadays, though assessing the
relative importance of this
compared to other factors, such
as cost, requires some
assumptions.
Structural demands
The relationships between strength and
weight density or between modulus of
elasticity and weight density are critical to
the design of materials for many types of
products and structures, and have driven
the development of modern metal alloys,
fibre composites, technical ceramics,
polymers and sandwich panels, that are
lightweight, strong, stiff and resilient
(Ashby & Johnson, 2014). However, self-
weight of a tunnel lining is not an
important consideration in and of itself.
Making a tunnel lining lighter will only be
beneficial if it reduces cost, either by
reducing volume of material used, or by
reducing the volume of excavation. In a
shaft or tunnel design, sometimes weight
is a good thing as it counteracts uplift
pressures.
So what is important to a tunnel lining?
It needs to withstand compression, but
also shear and bending. It needs to have a
minimum stiffness to control
deformations, but flexural stiffness has a
knock-on effect of increasing the bending
moments when ground stresses are
uneven or when the shape of the tunnel is
non-circular. In order to make some broad
generalisations, first we need to simplify.
Kuesel (1987) argues that axial stiffness
of a tunnel lining is what allows
redistribution of stresses in the ground,
but flexural stiffness should be as low as
possible. For example, if the ground
deforms the lining elliptically, Kuesel says
that it is the axial stiffness that transfers
the stresses and allows an equilibrium to
be achieved. The flexural stiffness does
little to restrain ground deformations and
only serves to increase bending moments
in the lining. As long as there are no voids
behind the tunnel lining, Kuesel says a
lining cannot fail in flexure independent of
ground deformation.
Browsing the literature for moment-axial
force (‘M-N’) interaction diagrams gives a
sense of typical loads in a tunnel lining.
Usually these published values are for
ground and water loads and may ignore
construction loads such as jacking loads
from a TBM, which may be more critical.
They also rarely show a lining that fails,
because they are usually describing
successful design. The majority of these
plot in the lower half of the M-N diagram,
as illustrated in Figure 2, where h is the
thickness of the lining, b is 1m length of
 Figure 2: M-N interaction diagram showing typical zone of concrete tunnel lining designs

TECHNICAL

curved and not two straight lines).

Ignoring soil-structure interaction, if a
slimmer lining were used and h were
divided by 2, this would move a point in
the interaction diagram upwards as N/bhfck
would increase by a factor of 2. However,
M/bh2fck would at the same time increase
by a factor of 4, moving the interaction
from point A to point B in Figure 4,
effectively because we have reduced the
moment capacity of the section. However,
knowing what we know about soil-
structure interaction, as h is reduced, the
moment of inertia I of the lining reduces
dramatically as it is proportional to h3/12,
and we should expect M to reduce
significantly, perhaps to a point C.
In the other direction, designers often
find they are chasing their tails. When the
lining has insufficient moment capacity
one option is to increase the
reinforcement, but this is often undesirable
Figure 3: Stress distribution across the thickness of a tunnel lining if the designer is trying to design with
plain concrete or a particular dosage of
fibre reinforcement, and trying to avoid
the need for steel bar or mesh
reinforcement. So instead they increase the
thickness of the section to increase its
moment capacity. The soil-structure
interaction analysis is then run again, but
unfortunately the new, thicker lining has
higher bending moments, so the lining
needs to be made thicker still.
A reasonable conclusion from this
discussion is that if unreinforced or lightly
reinforced concrete linings are desirable,
improvements could be made to reduce
their flexural stiffness and thus reduce their
thickness. Historically, this has been
achieved by having radial joints in

tunnel, fck is the characteristic cylinder

Figure 4: Effect of reducing lining thickness by a factor of 2
strength of the concrete. N is the axial
(hoop) force and M is the bending
moment. The curve shown on Figure 2 is
the capacity of the section, in this case
plain concrete with no reinforcement, to
withstand a combination of M and N; as
long as design values of M and N plot
inside it, the ultimate limit state is ok.
Figure 2 shows that when we are in the
bottom half of the capacity curve, higher
hoop forces are beneficial, in that they
allow a larger moment to coexist. This is
because concrete is weaker in tension than
in compression, and when the hoop and
bending stresses across the section are
added together, as shown in Figure 3,
neither the design tensile strength nor the
design compressive strength can be
exceeded. For the more advanced readers,
note that Figure 3 assumes linear elastic
stress-strain behaviour to make things
easier to understand, whereas the capacity
curve in Figure 2 assumes a nonlinear
stress-strain relationship as recommended
in BS EN 1992-1-1: 2004 (hence why it is

TUNNELLING JOURNAL 39
 TECHNICAL

segmental linings that are designed to High performance fibre-reinforced REFERENCES

articulate. In recent years, there has been
a trend towards using fewer segments
with stiffer joints that are almost always
staggered in the longitudinal direction,
further increasing the flexural stiffness of
the ring.
An alternative solution would be to use
a different material. Clearly a material with
a better tensile strength will work better
as a thin lining that is flexible but has axial
stiffness. This has led to research into new
materials for tunnel linings, such as
engineered cementitious composites (ECC)
by Morgan Sindall UnPS with the
University of Surrey (Boughanem, 2014),
and this will be discussed in the following
section.
It is often the case that segment design
is driven by construction loads, in
particular the jacking forces, and not the
ground and water loads in the permanent
situation. If linings really are significantly
thicker because of this, then perhaps we
need to think about the way jacking forces
are transferred to the tunnel lining to
reduce material consumption, cost and
CO2 emissions.
New concrete tunnel lining materials
Engineered cementitious composite
(ECC)
Sometimes called ‘bendable concrete’,
ECC can sustain tensile strains of 3-7%
(Said et al., 2015). It is a cementitious
mortar containing small short polymer
fibres, usually poly vinyl alcohol fibres 8-
10mm long and 38 microns diameter. The
fibres encourage growth of a large
number of microcracks with a specific
width of less than 50 microns. The first
crack appears at quite a low tensile stress
of about 2.5MPa and the ultimate tensile
strength will be around 4.6MPa.
Therefore, a thin ECC lining would not
only provide a low flexural stiffness with a
good axial stiffness, but it also provides
high levels of ductility. The small crack
widths also allow autogenous self-
healing.
cementitious composites (HPFRCC)
HPFRCC contains polymer or metal fibres
and exhibits strain hardening when
loaded beyond its initial peak. ECC is a
special subset of HPFRCC. The steel fibre
reinforced concrete used for the Lee
Tunnel lining (Hover et al., 2015) was a
kind of HPFRCC, as it exhibited strain
hardening behaviour after first crack.
High strength-high ductility concrete
(HSHDC)
ECC and HPFRCC have excellent
properties, and the increased ductility will
enable larger deformations and
distortions without failure, and the
smaller crack widths will improve
durability. But what we really want is a
higher tensile strength. HSHDC has a
high compressive strength > 150MPa,
high ductility with an ultimate strain 3.7-
4.8%, and relatively high tensile strength
at 14.5MPa (Ranade et al., 2013).
All these cementitious composite
materials could work as thin tunnel
linings. Their main drawback is the high
cement content (ECC has more than
800kg/m3, HSHDC has approximately
900kg/m3), which will increase cost and
increase the carbon footprint per m3
relative to ordinary concrete. However, if
significantly less volume is needed, these
materials may be a better option.
Other materials
There may be other materials that could
be used instead of cementitious
materials. ‘Ashby charts’ (Ashby &
Johnson, 2014) are a fantastic tool for
finding materials with the material
properties you are looking for. In the
range of tensile strengths from 10-
100MPa, there are mostly metals and
metal alloys. Assuming that these are
probably too expensive, the other
materials in this zone are polymers such
as polyethylene, polypropylene and PTFE,
and glass fibre reinforced polymers.
It may seem that there are plenty of
reasons why some of these materials may
Ashby, M. & Johnson, K. (2014).
Materials and design – the art and
science of material selection in
product design, 3rd edition. London:
Butterworth-Heinemann/Elsevier.
Boughanem, S. (2014). Aspects of the
behaviour of engineered cement
composites. EngD Thesis, University of
Surrey.
Hover, E., Psomas, S. & Eddie, C.
(2015). Estimating crack widths in
steel fibre-reinforced concrete. Proc.
ICE Construction Materials, Ahead of
Print, DOI: 10.1680/coma.15.00019.
ITA (1988). Guidelines for tunnel
design. Tunnelling & Underground
Space Technology 3, No.3, 237-249.
Ranade, R., Li, V. C. & Heard, W. F.
(2015). Tensile rate effects in high
strength-high ductility concrete.
Cement & Concrete Research 68, 94-
104.
not work, but perhaps we should think
about how the construction and
installation method could be adapted to
make them work and we may end up
with a better tunnel.
Conclusions
We have looked briefly at a ‘materials
design’ approach to tunnel linings, and it
has potential to bring new insights on
what materials may be suitable for tunnel
linings. A more detailed examination may
be worthwhile.
Fibre reinforced cementitious
materials have the potential to be as
ductile or more ductile than conventional
reinforced concrete, and can have much
higher compressive and tensile strength.
If this can lead to thinner linings, the
higher cost per unit volume may be
justified.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

I congratulate TJ and Prof Arnold Dix in publishing a
very stimulating article on the outcome of the
Glendoe case and one which I hope will be widely
read by tunnelling clients and contractors. There is
one point on which I’d like to comment. There is
reference under the heading “Mistrust grows” to HSE
providing “advice on a mediation strategy”. I believe
this should read “advice on a remediation strategy”.
HSE never sought in any way to influence the
relationship between SSE and Hochtief or to express a
preference for the remedial works contractor. My
comments to SSE at the meeting of 12th October,
related to the provision of a concrete invert in the
headrace tunnel and the determination of the size of
the void and its propagation upwards (Paragraph 122
of Lord Woolman’s “Opinion”).
Yours faithfully
Dr Donald Lamont
Head of Tunnel and Ground Engineering,
HSE, 1989 – 2010.

40 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
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42 TUNNELLING JOURNAL

Dispute Adjudication Boards
– a preferred mechanism for
tunnelling projects?
Tunnelling projects typically go hand-in-
hand with uncertainty, as even with a
thorough investigation the exact geological
conditions are unpredictable and during
construction the design has to be adjusted
to the actual ground conditions. These
adjustments can lead to additional costs and
delays, thereby challenging contract
administration and project management. As
a consequence of the above, tunnelling is
prone to disputes. Construction contracts
should thus provide a system for resolving
claims and disputes on compensation in
order to avoid the escalation of the dispute
and to maintain good relationships during
these long-term projects and beyond.
Dispute Adjudication Boards (DABs) are
designed to serve this exact purpose. DABs
aim to avoid the occurrence of disputes
during construction and to promote the early
resolution of disputes.
In the tunnelling sector, DABs were first
made use of in 1987 in the Anglo-French
Channel Tunnel Project and consisted of a
permanent five member Board. With the
project having a total value of US$14bn, only
13 disputes arose, of which 12 were settled
pre-arbitration. The use of DAB procedures
received a boost in 1995 when introduced in
one of the FIDIC Books, which are today
considered to be possibly the most
frequently used contract forms for
international infrastructure projects. Due to
the popularity of these standard forms, DABs
are now prevalent in construction projects
such as tunnelling. According to the
(fragmentary) data collected by the Dispute
Resolution Board Foundation (DRBF), almost
3000 projects included Dispute Resolution
Boards like DABs. This prevalence of DABs in
particular can be expected to further
increase in the tunnelling sector with the
publication of a new FIDIC Book designed
specifically for Underground works (see our
latest article in the last Tunnelling Journal
Issue April/May 2017). DABs are also
recognised by the International Tunnelling
Association (ITA) for tunnelling projects.
LEGAL
Ulrich Helm and Fabian
Bonke of the international
law firm Hogan Lovells
International LLP here talk
us through why Dispute
Adjudication Boards could
be the preferred dispute
settlement mechanism for
the underground
construction industry
What are DABS?
DABs consist of one or three impartial
experts, who are preferably experienced and
highly trained engineers. In comparison to the
Engineer who has conferred decision-making
functions under the FIDIC Conditions of
Contract, the DAB acts truly independently.
The Engineer, however, is subject to a conflict
of interest: he is hired and paid for by the
Employer, being his agent in some cases,
while still being expected to act impartially
when deciding on disputes. This conflict of
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 43
 LEGAL
interest created an element of scepticism
towards the too strong role of the Engineer,
eventually leading to a shift of powers from
the Engineer to the DAB. The first edition of
the FIDIC Red Book still resolved disputes by
written decisions of the employer's engineer,
whose decision was final and therefore could
only be altered by an arbitral award, without
an intermediary DAB. The 1996 Supplement
to the FIDIC Red Book then introduced the
option to reduce the Engineer's role to a – still
important – first instance decision-maker
while conferring the pre-arbitral role to the
DAB.
DABs render temporarily binding decisions
that differentiates them from Dispute Review
Boards (DRBs) or mediators. DRBs render non-
binding advice on disputes and are more
One other great strength of DABs
is the vast technical expertise of its
members. DAB members are typically
experienced engineers, who are
familiar with both the technical issues
and best practice in the
construction sector.
prevalent in North America. Mediation is
common across the globe and its use is not
limited to only construction cases. A neutral
mediator attempts to identify and resolve
the disagreement between the parties, acts
as a communication channel between the
parties and may propose settlement
solutions. If the parties, however, are not
capable of reaching an agreement the
mediator is not entitled to make a binding
decision.
DAB appointment and routine
operations
The parties of a FIDIC Yellow Book-contract
can choose between a DAB consisting of one
or three members. FIDIC recommends three
members when the project volume exceeds
US$25M. In this constellation, each party will
normally select one member and the
chairman will be appointed by these two
appointed members. Sometimes the contract
will contain a list of people who can be
appointed for the DAB. In this case the parties
are obliged to choose a person from that list.
The DAB should be appointed as early as
possible, thus at the commencement of
construction, and should remain in existence
throughout the lifespan of the project. Early
appointment is key in order for the members
to detect problems on site and to become
conversant with the project.
The main task of a DAB is to resolve the
disputes that the parties refer to it. The exact
procedure for making a decision on these
44 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
disputes is generally at the discretion of the
DAB. It would normally be expected to
conduct a hearing and possibly to request
written submissions from both parties prior to
this hearing. The DAB's decision should briefly
describe the matter in dispute, the relevant
facts and the basis for its decision, particularly
including the applied contractual provisions.
Apart from dispute settlement, regular site
visits should form part of the routine work of
the DAB. Good knowledge of the site,
experienced by actually visualising it, can be a
major advantage at a later stage when it
comes to disputes. Therefore, regular site
visits by the DAB can reduce the works for
reconstructing historical events later. The
frequency of those routine site visits is highly
dependent on the actual project or the state
of it. As a guideline, the FIDIC Red Book
provides for visits in intervals between 70 and
140 days and additional visits during critical
phases of construction. During these site visits
the DAB should be informed about the
progress of the project, as well as existing or
potential difficulties. Additionally,the parties
would have the opportunity to bring forward
issues that they consider as important to
them.
Strengths and limits of DABs
Without a doubt, DABs have their strengths
but cannot be a forum to resolve all different
kinds of disputes conclusively.
One key strength is the focus on dispute
avoidance. With the availability of a – often
permanent – DAB, disputes can be resolved at
an early stage which helps to save money and
time and thus to maintain good project
relationships. The parties are reluctant to take
tenuous or extreme positions in a dispute, as
that may result in losing their credibility with
the Board members. Also, the reoccurring
problem of aggregation of unresolved claims
is minimised since the DAB encourages the
parties to promptly refer disputes. Critics,
however, cast doubt that DABs actually bring
these advantages. Parties who are willing to
settle amicably would do this without a DAB,
and Parties that are not willing to settle will
not accept a DAB's decision and will
commence arbitration in any event. Without a
doubt, DABs do not always make a difference
to a dispute. However, from our research and
experience, there are a number of cases
where DABs provided for an adequate forum
to find an acceptable solution to a dispute.
Even if parties are generally willing to settle
amicably, they can disagree as to the exact
conditions of a compromise. Having an
unbiased and experienced Board render the
decision can ensure that settling is made
easier for both sides.
One other great strength of DABs is
the vast technical expertise of its
members. DAB members are
typically experienced engineers,
who are familiar with both the
technical issues and best
practice in the construction
sector. Limits, however, can
be reached when it comes
to legal and contract
interpretation issues. These
issues are preferably
resolved by legal experts
who are specialised in
construction law cases. The
dispute settling mechanism
that the FIDIC contracts provide
takes advantage of the respective
organ's abilities and considers those
limitations. The Engineer works as a
first filter for disputes that do not inherit
legal but technical problems. Many of these
technical and/or less contentious issues can
already be resolved in this first step, when
both parties are satisfied with the Engineer's
determination following the claim. Disputes
arising from the determination might then be
resolved by a DAB's decision. Thanks to the
qualification of the Board members and their
close involvement in the project there is a
high chance the dispute can be settled
conclusively at this stage.
Furthermore, DABs are said to be relatively
inexpensive. There have been surveys on the
costs of DABs reaching the conclusion that
they only make up for 0.05 % to 0.3 % of
the total project costs. Usually costs of the

Figure 1: Comparison of the current
and new FIDIC books
CURRENT YELLOW AND RED BOOK
Dispute arising
Appointmentt of the DAB
Appointment
within 28 days
DAB's decision
within 84 days
NOD within 28 days
Opportunity for amicable
settlement, 56 days
Arbitration
NEW YELLOW BOOK
AND UNDERGROUND BOOK
(Differences To Current Book In Green)
Engineer's determination
NOD wi
within
ithin
thi
hin 28
2 days
Reference of dispute to the
DAB within 28 days
DAB's decision
within 84 days
NOD within 28 days
Opportunity for amicable
settlement, 28 days
Arbitration within 182 days
after second NOD
DAB will be shared equally by the parties.
These costs seem particularly low when
compared to those expected in arbitration or
litigation and the loss of productive project
time. In some cases, there is, however, no
alternative to arbitration or litigation and any
additional work by a DAB might cause
unnecessarily incurred additional costs. As set
out, this might be the case if legal and
contract interpretation issues arise. Or the
dispute escalates to such an extent that the
parties aim to reach a binding decision that is
also immediately enforceable against the
other party.
DABS IN THE FIDIC BOOKS
Current FIDIC Yellow and Red Book
In the widely used FIDIC Yellow and Red Book
DABs hold key role in their tiered dispute
resolution mechanism. In short, the DAB is
deployed after a determination by the
Engineer and before arbitration commences.
A typical procedure would be as follows: One
party considers itself entitled to additional
payment due to altered conditions and gives
notice of this to the Engineer. If he approves
of the claim, the Engineer makes an
appropriate determination. When a party is
dissatisfied with the determination, it gives
notice to the other party of its intention to
refer the dispute to a DAB, without being
bound by a time limit. After its appointment,
the DAB then renders a decision within 84
days. In case of disagreement with the DABs
decision, the party has to give a Notice of
Disagreement (NOD) to the other party within
28 days. The Red and Yellow Books then
provide for a period of 56 days for a last
attempt at dispute avoidance and amicable
settlement. Arbitration can subsequently be
commenced under the rules of the
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC),
without any time limits. Hereby, a party is not
entitled to bypass the DAB by directly
initiating arbitration proceedings but the DAB
proceedings are rather a necessary
precondition.
New FIDIC Yellow Book and FIDIC Book
for Underground Works
In particular the DAB procedure in the FIDIC
Yellow book has been criticised for different
reasons, which will be addressed in the new
edition of the FIDIC Yellow Book (release
expected in September 2017) and the new
FIDIC Book for Underground Works (release
of test edition expected in 2019/2020).
One point of criticism has arisen from the
fact that the DAB is appointed ad hoc, when
disputes have already arisen. Thus, the
challenging task of appointing the Board
members appears in the midst of a dispute
and the Board members cannot assist in
avoiding disputes in the first place. Taking
account of these concerns, the new Books
now set a greater focus on dispute avoidance.
This is illustrated by the addition of "Dispute
Avoidance" to the name of the Dispute
Adjudication Board. As has been proven to be
successful in the FIDIC Red Book and FIDIC
Gold Book of 2008, the DAB is now
constituted as permanent instead of ad hoc
and, therefore, remains in place until the
works are completed. This is expected to have
a positive effect on dispute avoidance, as
prevention is only possible before a claim is
made. The availability of informal assistance
by the DAB to resolve disputes at an early
stage also supports dispute avoidance.
Furthermore, it has been critically raised
that the DAB procedure would take too long.
The FIDIC Books now provide for tighter
deadlines for the whole dispute resolution
including the procedure in front of DABs. This
will very likely apply to the upcoming Yellow
Book and the upcoming Book for Tunnelling
and Underground Works. Hereafter, a party
who is dissatisfied with a determination by
the Engineer, now has to give a first NOD to
the other party within 28 days. No longer
than 28 days after this, the dispute has to be
referred to the – already appointed, as it is
permanent – DAB. If this period of time
LEGAL
expires, the NOD is deemed to have lapsed
and be no longer valid, leading to the
irrefutable presumption that both Parties have
conclusively accepted the determination. Also
new is that Arbitration can only be
commenced within 182 days after the NOD
following the DAB's decision, but not before
the 28th day after the day the NOD was given
(even if no attempt at amicable settlement
was made). The parties will on the one hand
benefit from streamlining the procedure. On
the other hand, the parties will have to make
sure that they respect the time limits in order
to preserve their own rights. The parties thus
require a well-organised contract
management also while working with a DAB.
Conclusion
In summary, DABs provide no "one-size-fits-
all" solution. Especially complex legal issues
call for the expertise of contract lawyers and
cannot be solved by a Board of technical
experts. The elaborated system provided by
FIDIC with a tiered dispute resolution
mechanism partly avoids these limits by
combining the DAB procedure with other
forms of dispute settling such as arbitration.
Despite this limitation, the merits of the
FIDIC's DAB procedure are notable. The Board
members provide for high technical expertise
allowing for an early resolution of a high
amount of disputes and even their avoidance
at relatively low costs. Because of its close
involvement in the construction process, a
permanent DAB can anticipate contentious
issues and ideally resolve them without much
expenditure. Only few, legally complex
disputes are brought to arbitration, saving
time and resources. Therefore the DAB
procedure was implemented in the FIDIC
standard forms as a crucial part of the
provided dispute resolution mechanism. It has
already proven to be successful in the current
FIDIC Books and considering the
improvements in the new FIDIC books will
have even more positive effects. It is however
important to note that the tight deadlines for
the assertion of claims and complex
procedural rules require the parties to set up a
well-organised contract management
throughout the entire project.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ulrich Helm is Partner and Fabian Bonke is
an Associate in the Frankfurt Office of the
international law firm Hogan Lovells
International LLP. They are part of the
Infrastructure, Energy, Resources and
Projects Group and frequently advise on
tunnelling and other large infrastructure
projects. The authors particularly thank
Ms Nora Stumpf for providing valuable
support in drafting the article. The views
expressed in this article are solely those of
the authors.
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 45
www.ucaofsmecuttingedge.com
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In broad terms, the
tunnelling industry is
familiar with the need to
improve sustainability. We
would all like to “tread
more lightly” in terms of
our environmental
footprint. Indeed some
clients, such as London
Underground, are even
demanding that the
embodied carbon dioxide is
estimated and tracked as a
project is developed
through the design stages.
Carbon dioxide is believed
to be a major contributor to
global warming but it is
not the only or indeed the
most potent greenhouse
gas. Similarly, global
warming is not the only
way in which humans can
have an impact on our
world. A broader approach
is needed to capture the
full complexity of the
environmental impact in
our assessments of tunnel
projects. Taking the
example of rock bolts, this
article seeks to
demonstrate the value of
the life-cycle assessment
method in this broader
approach.
By Dr Jana Kodymova,
Ostrava University, Dr
Alun Thomas, Minova, and
Markus Will, University of
Applied Sciences
Zittau/Görlitz
Life-cycle
assessments of
rock bolts
The life-cycle assessment (LCA) method is
based on the interdependence of relationships
within the environment. It is grounded in the
premise that each product is linked to the
environment not only by its inputs (material
and energy matter), but also its outputs
(substances emitted into the environment
during production, consumption and disposal).
The basic principle of LCA is the collection
and evaluation of the inputs and outputs and
researching potential impacts of the product
system on the environment throughout its life-
cycle (Curran 2015, Klöpffer 2014). In LCA, the
flows between the different product stages
(source extraction, production, transport,
storage, consumption and disposal) and the
environment are mapped. The goal is to
determine and quantify all potential
environmental impacts of the assessed
product. Typically, a LCA consists of four major
phases:
1. During the definition of goal and scope, the
framework of the study is developed.
Amongst other things, this includes a
description of the product system to be
studied, the system boundaries, the
functional unit and allocation procedures as
well as impact categories.
2. The Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is about
collecting and analysing quantified data
related to extraction of resources from
nature and emissions caused by our
processes (e.g. emissions to e.g. air and
water, waste generation and resource
consumption). The whole life cycle is
included in a cradle-to-grave approach, in
which all environmental burdens from the
extraction of raw materials through
production and use to final disposal,
including recycling, reuse, and energy
recovery, have been included.
3. The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is
the estimation of potential environmental
impacts in terms of climate change, summer
smog, resource depletion, acidification,
human health effects, etc. The
environmental impacts are associated with
the environmental interventions attributable
to the life-cycle of a product.
4. Interpretation of the findings, providing
conclusions and recommendations as well as
clearly stated assumptions and limitations of
SUSTAINABILITY
the study.
In general, each product can be said to interact
with the environment throughout its whole life
cycle. However, the degree of influence
depends on each stage of the product’s life
(e.g. the main impact could be in the
production stages; other products may have
the main potential impact during their
consumption stages or the disposal stages).
Product life-cycles are variable in duration (e.g.
food does not usually exceed 2 weeks, but
infrastructure may last tens of years).
It should be noted that one product may
have several life cycles that can be compared
and the LCA method can help to select the
most environmental friendly option for that
product. These variations may be caused by
differences in production technologies, the
differences in the use of the same product,
differences in product disposal, etc.
LCA amongst other approaches
The LCA methodology is formally supported by
EN ISO 14040. This standard helps to make it
transparent. Thus the results are comparable to
others; there is basic control of the used
information, and comparability of potential
environmental impacts.
If we compare a LCA study with a carbon
footprint study, the LCA is more
comprehensive because it affects more
environmental categories. An LCA can study
over 20 different environmental indicators at
once - issues such as toxicity, ozone, water
depletion, eutrophication, particular matter
formation, acidification, hazardous waste,
material depletion, metal depletion….and
more.
In BREEAM, a LCA can score extra credits.
This can help to achieve a BREEAM excellent or
BREEAM outstanding ratings. These credits are
available through the BREEAM section ‘Mat 01
Life cycle impacts’. There are up to 9 points
available, and another 6 BREEAM points can
be obtained by assessing the material
environmental impacts. Here the LCA may be
supported by generic data (non-manufacturer
specific).
LCA is also applicable to LEED certification
(building lifecycle rating credits). In total, one
can score 3 LCA credits in LEED. Credits can be
obtained for new buildings (or parts of
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 47
 SUSTAINABILITY
buildings) by completing the life cycle assessment
of the structure and achieving at least a 10%
reduction in environmental impact of the main
building. As part of the assessment to achieve
LEED certification and the LCA credits, no impact
category chosen as part of the life cycle
assessment can increase by more than 5%
compared with the baseline building. In the case
of LEED, the LCA study must comply with ISO
14044:2006 to achieve the extra credits.
CASE STUDY: LCA for rockbolts
To illustrate, we can look at a study of the
environmental impacts related to a rock bolt. This
comparison covered rock bolts for use in tunnels
in Europe with the bolts sourced in China or
Europe. We considered two typical types of
permanent rock bolts: galvanized steel bolts and
GFRP bolts. It was assumed that both bolts were
anchored with resin cartridges.
LCA is different to other approaches of
environmental assessment since it is a relative
approach based on a functional unit and specific
to the system boundaries. The functional unit is a
description of the quantified performance of a
product system. It is used as a reference unit,
meaning that all environmental impacts are
related and broken down to this functional unit.
In our case, the functional unit used is:
1m of rock bolt, 100 years life-time
[environmental impacts per (1m*100a)]
This functional unit was chosen in order to allow
comparability with other studies.
All life cycle stages shown in Figure 1 have
been considered in the study, with particular
focus on production and installation processes,
where original data has been used. Foreground
and background processes, in particular transport
processes, have been modelled with help of
generic data based on the Ecoinvent database
(version 2.2). If no process data have been
available, we estimated with expert judgements
or used process data from equivalent processes
or products.
We assessed the environmental impact using
the CML (Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen
Leiden) methodology. This methodology uses the
midpoint impact categories, meaning that the
degree of environmental impact is expressed in
different impact categories (toxicity, ozone, water
depletion, etc.). However, no damage on areas of
protection such as natural ecosystems, human
health or resources is modelled. The indicator
results in each impact category are expressed
relative to the reference substance causing the
same degree of environmental impact, i.e. the
global warming potential of methane is
described relative to carbon dioxide in CO2-
equivalents. The study presents results as impact
category indicators and the normalised results.
Results of the study
When we compared the product systems based
on the functional units of "one metre rock bolt
with a lifetime of 100 years”, we estimated the
impact as shown in the following graph (for the
cases of steel bolts produced in Europe and
48 TUNNELLING JOURNAL
China). While it has been assumed that the
galvanized steel bolts have a lifetime of 100
years, this is a highly questionable assumption
since the protective coating can be damaged
during transport and installation. For steel bolts
to have a life-time of 100 years, they are often
required to have multiple layers of corrosion
protection.
Results of the characterisation underline that
composite GFRP shows less than 65% of
environmental impacts compared to steel.
Regarding the “material miles”, it is clear from
the graph that the biggest difference in terms of
negative impacts occurs within the categories of
acidification and eutrophication. In the case of
these two categories, the impact of road
transport by truck within Europe is 50% lower
than in the case of shipping from China. The
tunnel project was located in Scandinavia.
Furthermore, we can observe the differences
within the Mineral Discharge category (Abiotic
Figure 1: The life-cycle stages of a
rock bolt considered in this study
PRODUCTION PHASE
The study works mainly with data
from Ecoinvent which are altered
by BREF documents
PHASE OF
PRODUCT TRANSPORT
The study worked with two variants:
1. Transport by shipping service
from China
2. Road transport by truck
within Europe
INSTALLATION AND
MAINTENANCE OF
THE PRODUCT
This phase includes the drilling of a
bore hole and rock-bolt installation
using polyester resin capsule
or cement mixture
Figure 2: The characterisation of a rock bolt - shipped from China and
Europe (midpoint category, CML method)
Depletion), Global Warming, and Photochemical
Oxidants. In the case of these three categories,
the distinction between different product systems
differentiated by the different modes of transport
is significant (the effect of transporting bolts by
road transport over moderate distances is 7-15%
more environmentally friendly than by long
distance shipping). The lower impact of road
transport is mainly due to its 10 times smaller
distance than in the case of shipping in the
example. Obviously, the exact location of each
project and the potential suppliers would affect
this calculation. However, the importance of this
factor is clear.
The concept of “food miles” was first coined
by Prof Tim Lang in the 1990s and it is now well-
established in consciousness. Similarly in the
construction industry, we may need to start
thinking about “materials miles” as an important
aspect in enhancing project sustainability. In this
study, we applied a transport model based on
Ecoinvent 2 data. The shipping distance was
calculated only from the port and to the port,
because the marginal distance from the port to
the place of installation was negligible (less than
1% of the total impact) and therefore the cut off
rule was applied. Average distances for shipping
20,000km and 2,000km for trucks were
assumed. This difference in the overall impact is
also visible in the following chart, where
individual impact category was normalised1 for
easier interpretation:
LCA analysis can give us an insight into the
individual life cycle stages (production, transport
and maintenance) as shown in Figure 4.
The figures show that the dominant influence
on the environment is the production of the
product (rock bolt). When the product is
transported by ship, the transport of product has
a significant influence on the environment.
However, when the product is transported by
lorry, then, from the point of view of the
environmental impact, the installation phase is
more dominant than the transportation.
The original study had a wider scope and also
compared rock bolt and GFRP bolt. It is known

Figure 3: Normalised results rock bolt - shipping from China and Europe
(midpoint category, CML method)
that there is a high risk of damage during
transport and installation in the case of rock
bolts. In contrast, GFRP exhibits very good long-
term durability. Therefore, in practice, if GFRP has
a longer lifetime, it will have even lower
environmental impact.
General application of LCA
The LCA method is currently considered to be
one of the most promising tools to facilitate
putting the principles of sustainable development
into practice. However, the adoption of this
method varies from country to country.
As an example of best practice, in the
European countries, the LCA method is usually
used in environmental labelling (mostly for
environmental labelling of EN ISO Types I and III).
Label Type I is in accordance with EN ISO 14024 –
Environmental labelling and declarations (ISO
14024, 2000) and with the National
environmental labelling programme of individual
countries. The National environmental labelling
programme establishes two kinds of the
environmental labelling Type I – an
environmentally friendly product (at a national
level) and EU Ecolabel known as European flower
(at an European level). In the case of Type I
labels, LCA is usually used in the creation of
product's directive (standard). The producers
need not create a specific LCA for their product;
they just have to demonstrate compliance with
the relevant product directive.
Type III labels comply with EN ISO 14025 –
Environmental labelling and declarations (EPD) –
The environmental product declaration (ISO
14025, 2006). If a producer wants to obtain this
type of label, they have a complex LCA study
made for their product, and based on this study,
materials for EPD are prepared. Therefore, in this
case an LCA study is the key instrument, and
must be created and verified for each individual
product. In the Czech Republic, 27 valid EPD
labels on the national level are currently certified
1
The essence of the normalisation is relating the indicators of the impact category to the set
reference values. The impact category indicators are divided according to the set reference
values which are set with regard to European countries. (Budavari, 2011)
Figure 4: The share of the individual
life-cycle phases in the overall impact
(midpoint category, CLM method)
SUSTAINABILITY
(9 of them are certified on the European level)
and another 12 EPD labels are at the stage of
precertification at present. The majority of the
registered and pre-certified products are simple
products, such as basic chemical substances,
furniture and construction materials.
In general, construction/building materials are
experiencing a boom in EPD labelling in
accordance with EN 15 804 – Building
sustainability – Environmental product
declaration (EN 15804, 2012).
Conclusions
In conclusion, the LCA method offers an
excellent way to assess the broad environmental
impact of a construction material, covering the
whole or part of its life-cycle, as required. This
gives a much more comprehensive picture of the
impact than, for example, an assessment of just
the embodied carbon dioxide. However, this
requires more effort and there is a need for
manufacturers to provide more data to databases
such as Ecoinvent. While manufacturers can
assist in the period up to transport to site, users
need to provide their own assessment of
transport, application and disposal, since these
are project specific conditions.
LCA is also a dynamic method that penetrates
other tools/methods that can be used in the
tunnelling industry such as BREEAM, LEED,
carbon footprint, sustainable buildings or
different types of environmental labelling of
products. The method can be applied to any
product used in any type of tunnel. In the
example shown, various rock bolts sourced from
various locations were assessed. This LCA
highlighted the strong negative impact of the
transport distance – i.e. in general high
“materials miles” have a negative impact on
environmental impact. In this particular case,
GFRP bolts were found to be the most
sustainable option, all aspects considered.
Hopefully, in the future, the tunnelling industry
will increase the sophistication of its analysis of
environmental impacts by using tools like LCA
and driving down the environmental impact will
be seen as equally important as reducing
financial costs as projects are developed.
The authors would like to thank everyone
involved in the original study on rockbolts, in
particular, Adam Janicek from Minova.
REFERENCES
Curran, Mary Ann (2012): Life Cycle
Assessment Handbook: A guide for
Environmentally Sustainable Products. John
Wiley & Sons.
Budavari et al. (2011): Low Resource
consumption buildings and constructions
by use of LCA in design and decision
making
Klöpffer, Walter and Grahl, Birgit (2014):
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): A Guide to
Best Practice. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH &
Co. KGaA
TUNNELLING JOURNAL 49
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www.tunnellingjournal.com June/July 2017

The international journal for the tunnelling industry

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SEE PAGE 6 SEE PAGE 14 SEE PAGE 23

WORLD HONG KONG MONITOR

NEWS SCL REVIEW PROGRESS
HIGHLIGHTS FROM TJ LOOKS AT THE A ROUND UP OF
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journal

MIXED CHALLENGES
AT BLACKLICK
FORGING AHEAD WITH THE TBM DRIVE
SEE  PAGE 4 SEE PAGE 8 SEE PAGE 14
ROSIE BLACKLICK SHOTCRETE
ASSEMBLED FORGES AHEAD INNOVATIONS
ROBBINS UNVEILS A VIEW DOWN NATJ REVIEWS
ROSIE, THE FIRST THE GANTRIES OF THE RECENT SHOTCRETE
CROSSOVER TBM TO HERRENKNECHT TBM WORKS THAT HAVE
BE USED IN THE US, BEING USED TO BEEN USED IN NEW
PREMIERING ON THE CONSTRUCT THE YORK ON
OHIO CANAL MIXED FACE TUNNEL UNCONVENTIONAL
INTERCEPTOR TUNNEL OPENINGS
 comment contentS
All in a month
It’s funny how one month can bring such good news for some,
8
and such bad news for others. May 5th saw New York Governor
Andrew M. Cuomo and Congressman Jerrold Nadler announce a
major milestone for the Cross Harbor Freight Movement Project
with the issuance of a Request For Proposals for a Tier II study. The
move will hugely bolster the likelihood of the execution of the
cross-harbor freight tunnel, a significant section of the project.
The tunnel will play a huge part in the removal of a staggering
1,800 trucks from the streets of New York per DAY, moving the
freight onto a more convenient, and environmentally friendly rail
network.
Meanwhile on the west coast, on May 25, not such great news,
as the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro)
Board of Directors withdrew its share of the funding of a
proposed $3.2 billion, 4.9-mile tunnel to extend the 710 Freeway
from its current terminus to Pasadena – pretty much killing the 4 North American News
Project, contract & company news
project in its tracks.
The 710 Freeway has history. Being a major conduit for truck
freight traffic coming up from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long
6 The Insider
Bob Goodfellow mulls over the issue of
innovation, and how best to encourage and
Beach it has always garnered opposition from Pasadena. Indeed nurture its use
protests lead to its abandonment in the 1960s, with the Freeway
subsequently and rather abruptly ending between El Sereno and
Alhambra. This of course led to an inundation of traffic, both car 8 Mixed challenges at Blacklick
With the TBM fully launched, the team on
Blacklick Creek Sanitary Interceptor Sewer
and truck onto the areas surrounding streets.
Ironically, both tunnels have one major thing in common; they is preparing to tackle a whole host of
different ground conditions. Kristina Smith
are both there to get heavy, slow traffic – and all of the serious
caught up with contractor, designer and
environmental issues that go with it - away from people. In the
construction manager to ask about the
case of New York, by taking truck freight and placing it on rails, challenges ahead.
for LA, just by getting the traffic moving again.
So it is sad to see LA taking something of a backwards step in
confronting this issue. And the truth is, in 15 years time when the 14 Shotcrete Innovations in the US
Andy Thompson, Vice President of Mott
MacDonald in New York, and Frank
people of New York are enjoying their cleaner air and less
congested streets, the people of LA will be going through the Townsend, Vice President of Operations for
whole process again, until one day they have no choice other specialty contractor Superior Gunite, discuss
innovations and issues when using sprayed
than to build the tunnel….time wasted indeed.
concrete for the installation of permanent
Tris Thomas structural linings for non-uniform openings

14

NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL 3

 NEWS www.tunnelingjournal.com - breaking industry news first!
Milestone in Cross Harbor
Freight Project
On May 5th, New York Governor Andrew M.
Cuomo and Congressman Jerrold Nadler
announced a major milestone for the Cross
Harbor Freight Movement Project with the
issuance by the Port Authority of a Request
for Proposals (RFP) for consultants to conduct
the Tier II Environmental Impact Study and
complementary advanced planning and
engineering work.
The Tier II study will thoroughly explore the
execution of a cross-harbor freight tunnel,
identified in Tier I as one of the solutions to
alleviate severe traffic congestion, reduce
dependence on aging roads and bridges, and
solve the region’s freight problem by finally
connecting New York City directly to the
national freight rail grid. The tunnel would
run between an existing rail yard in the
Greenville area of Jersey City to connect with
existing rail infrastructure in Brooklyn. The
Port Authority has committed up to $35
million for the study and has available up to
another $35 million for further design and
engineering
“New York leads the nation in tackling the
largest and most complex infrastructure
challenges head on, and this project will
identify an innovative, 21st century solution
to streamline congestion and support
McNally/Kiewit JV scoops Doan Valley Tunnel
The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer
District (NEORSD) Board of Trustees has
approved the award of the Doan Valley
Tunnel contract to McNally/Kiewit DVT
Joint Venture in the amount of
$142,320,000.00.
The contract comprises of
approximately 10,000ft of 18ft inside
diameter combined sewer overflow
storage tunnel, approximately 9,200ft of
8.5ft inside diameter conveyance tunnel,
seven shafts, two adits and other
4 NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL
economic growth for generations to come,”
Governor Cuomo said. “After generations of
neglect, New York is once again building for
the future, and by investing in world-class
transportation projects across the state, we
drive economic activity and help make our
great state even greater.”
Congressman Jerrold Nadler said, “The
Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel project, which
I have supported for more than 30 years, will
finally connect the New York metropolitan
region to the national freight rail grid by
removing trucks from our streets and diverting
them to the underutilized rail network. It will
change the way we move goods throughout
our region for the better, with economic,
environmental, health, safety and cost saving
benefits for millions of people.”
New York City is the only major city in the
world that is not directly connected to its
country’s national freight rail network.
Without this key rail link, more than one
billion tons of freight move through the
greater New York region each year primarily
by truck, with truck congestion adding an
estimated $2.5 billion annually to the cost of
delivering goods to consumers and
businesses. Trucks transport about 90 percent
of the freight, while rail handles only 2-3
connections between the tunnels and
shafts, connections to existing culverts,
consolidation sewers, near surface
structures, rehabilitation of existing
culvert, and modifications to existing
regulators. The project will also require
coordination with other ongoing tunnel
contracts.
Doan Valley is the third of eight tunnel
projects which make up NEORSD’s $3bn,
25-year Project Clean Lake program
which began in 2011. The program will
percent – with most freight arriving by rail at
points west of New York and relying on
trucks to reach their final destinations. It costs
as much to move goods from New Jersey to
Manhattan as it does to move them 500
miles or more in some other areas of the
United States. In the next 20 years, freight to,
from, and through this region is expected to
increase by at least 37 percent – beyond the
capacity of our roadways, putting a lid on
economic development.
The Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel would
help reduce congestion on roads and bridges,
improve air quality and reduce asthma, as
well as allow better movement of emergency
vehicles and buses. It would greatly decrease
the cost of goods and of doing business by
improving the efficiency and cost of freight
delivery. It would also create a necessary
redundancy in this critical transportation
system, thereby fortifying a national security
vulnerability. The Cross Harbor Rail Freight
Tunnel would remove 1,800 trucks from New
York Harbor crossings per day or half a million
trucks per year.
The Port Authority and the Federal
Highway Administration completed a draft
Tier 1 Environmental Impact Statement that
was published in November 2014, and
following public hearings, stakeholder review
and comment, a Record of Decision for the
Tier 1 was issued by the FHWA in January
2016. The Tier II study will also evaluate an
enhancement of the existing railcar float-
barge operation.
allow the District to meet Clean Water
Act regulations by creating a network of
storage tunnels to hold the combined
flows after rainfall events and deep
tunnel dewatering pump stations to
convey the flows to the recently
upgraded wastewater treatment plant;
The Euclid Creek Tunnel and the Dugway
Storage Tunnel (the first two tunnels to
be built for the program) will be capable
of storing 117M gallons of wastewater
between them.
 www.tunnelingjournal.com - breaking industry news first! NEWS

Robbins unveils first US Crossover TBM

‘Rosie’ – the 30ft (9.26m) diameter XRE (or
Crossover) TBM that Kenny/Obayashi Joint
Venture will use to construct the Ohio Canal
Interceptor Tunnel (OCIT) – is now fully
assembled and ready to be tested before
shipping to the city of Akron this June.
The Robbins Company hosted local media
and project executives at its facility in Solon,
Ohio, on May 25 to unveil the $12 million
machine, which is a cross between a hard
rock shielded TBM and an EPB. Present were
Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan, Robbins chief now be disassembled and shipped 25-miles Cuyahoga and Little Cuyahoga rivers and
engineer Dennis Ofiari, and David Chastka, south to the site, with mining expected to comprises 6,240ft (1.9km) of TBM driven
Project Engineer for the Kenny-Obayashi JV. begin before the end of the summer. The tunnel that will be lined with a one-pass
Project representatives from DLZ, Parsons and TBM will be launched from a portal site and precast segmental liner. It will convey dry
McMillen Jacobs Associates were also on will excavate its first several hundred feet in weather sanitary flow by gravity to the Little
hand. soft ground before switching to hard-rock Cuyahoga Interceptor (LCI) sewer and be
Rosie – named after Mary Rose Jacob, an mode for the remainder of the drive. capable of storing up to 25 million gallons of
Akronite who began building aircraft wings The $184 million OCIT tunnel is the largest combined sanitary and storm flows during
at Firestone Aircraft during World War II, component of Akron’s $1.4 billion mandated wet weather events. Work is due to be
when she was a junior in high school – will program to control overflows into the finished by the end of 2018.

Nicholson consolidates regional offices

Nicholson Construction recently
consolidated several of its offices to
form two new main regions. The
Central Region, led by Dan Thome,
will include offices and shops in Salt
Lake City, Denver, Chicago and
Kalamazoo. In his 17-year career with
Nicholson, Dan has held many
positions, including his most recent as
Vice President of the company’s
former Midwest Region.
Nicholson’s Eastern Region will
include offices in Pittsburgh and
Newark and will be led by Stephane
Bourillot, a 25-year veteran of
Soletanche Bachy, Nicholson’s parent
company. Stephane most recently was
responsible for all of Soletanche’s
construction in the southern half of
France and has previously held
leadership positions for the company
in the French West Indies and South
East Asia.
The company's Special Projects
group, led by Luca Barison, will
continue to bid and construct larger
projects across the country.

Cuomo announces Metro votes to cease

plan to combat crisis
at Penn Station
On May 23, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced an
aggressive action plan to address New York’s transportation
challenges starting with the near-term crisis at Penn Station and the
ripple effect it will have on the entire transit system. With derailments
and cancellations at Penn Station resulting in costly delays for millions
of travelers, the Governor’s plan provides both short and long-term
solutions to address the chronic failures at the station. Each workday,
more than 600,000 people travel through Penn Station, which is
owned by Amtrak and the federal government – more than triple the
facility’s designed capacity. Amtrak is proposing repairs that would
reduce the number of trains at Penn Station by about 20 percent
during peak travel times and as a result, commuters searching for
alternative methods of transportation will crush an already
overburdened subway system and clog roads and bridges.
Cuomo’s plan focuses on three parts: 1) Develop an immediate plan
for the Penn Station summer crisis; 2) Recommend viable long-term
management solution for Penn Station and turning it into a 21st
Century transit hub with Farley Train Hall and the Gateway Tunnel; 3)
Challenge MTA to modernize the New York City subway system and
increase the number of trains at peak periods to relieve crowding and
reduce delays.
funding for 710 Tunnel
On May 25, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority
(Metro) Board of Directors unanimously approved a motion to end its
share of the funding of a proposed $3.2 billion, 4.9-mile tunnel to
extend the 710 freeway from Alhambra to Pasadena.
The vote diverts roughly $700 million in funding earmarked for the
tunnel project to other local street-improvement projects.
While the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has
the final say on the tunnel, by removing its share of funding Metro
has effectively killed the project, thus putting the 45-year battle over
extension plans for the 710 freeway back to square one.
The 710 freeway is a major conduit for truck freight traffic coming
up from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. As the freeway was
being built in the 1960s, protests from South Pasadena delayed
completion, resulting in the freeway ending at Valley Boulevard on the
border between El Sereno and Alhambra. Since then, trucks and other
traffic coming off the freeway has inundated those communities.
Attempts to extend the freeway to connect with the 210 Freeway in
Pasadena have been repeatedly stymied by opposition from South
Pasadena, Pasadena, and neighboring cities that didn’t want another
freeway slicing through their communities. Several years ago, Caltrans
proposed putting the connecting segment underground to avoid
disrupting those cities, but still met opposition.

NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL 5


INNOVATION?
COMPLICATED?
INNOVATION IS A curious thing. We talk of
innovation being the lifeblood of the future of
our industry. We talk about innovation as the
theme of conferences and celebrate our firsts
and our new developments. We should always
celebrate the innovative designs, construction
techniques and materials we use to meet the
objectives of owners. But as a wise man once
said: “who knew innovation in underground
construction could be so complicated?”
I take part in many discussions about
innovation and the benefits and the risks
involved. Value engineering proposals may
suggest new applications or entirely new
processes or materials. A design-build team’s
alternative technical concept might use an idea
for a project in the Far East and apply it to a
project in the US for the first time. Proposals,
ideas and questions on innovation and the risks
and benefits of these innovations are
widespread and growing.
One benefit of a globally integrated business
is that innovations made in one part of the
world can spread quickly. Of course, one
disbenefit of a globally integrated business is
also that innovations spread quickly – and
perhaps are suggested for projects and
applications before they are understood
completely. In tunneling, our industry contains
separate factions; and each has a role and
responsibility for innovation. These factions
provide a push and pull to the innovation
process. This is ultimately helpful to fully vet
solutions that drive the industry forward.
Technical innovation in our business is often
driven by equipment and material suppliers
who are commercially compelled to constantly
strive for improved and more efficient products.
They have by far the largest research and
development programs and budgets and are
constantly using this budget while seeking an
edge on their competition.
Contractors looking for their own
commercial edge use past experiences and
6 NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL
the
insider
Bob Goodfellow, PE, Senior Vice
President, Aldea Services LLC
observations of other successful projects,
alongside discussions with suppliers, to look
forward and think of innovative ways to solve
problems using the products that these
suppliers provide. Specialty contractors are
experts, often in a narrow field, and use this
highly-specialized expertise to develop their
practice beyond currently accepted standards.
They do so from a position of deep knowledge
and an understanding of basic principles,
allowing them more comfort with the higher
risk profile associated with this innovation.
Owners are the bank in this process. They
pay for the project to be built and ultimately
gain the benefits of successful innovation while
also frequently accepting much of the risk
when things don’t go so well. The owner is
most frequently seen as a force that is resistant
to innovation. They are also the least technically
knowledgeable of all project participants and
therefore must be convinced that the
innovation serves their interests and that the
relevant risks are both identified and are able to
be managed appropriately.
This brings us to the final faction, the
Engineers. Engineers represent the owners, but
also act as an industry advocate and the most
reliable gateway to get innovative ideas
included into projects. Engineers have a big
responsibility to the industry and need to keep
up to date on technical developments in design
and construction. To fulfil their critical role, they
must have the technical knowledge and
expertise to judge when innovations can be
applied to their projects. To do this, they must
also be able to communicate with suppliers
and contractors, including specialty contractors,
to fully understand the innovative material,
method or equipment. Finally, the engineer
must be able to communicate to the owner
the benefits and the risks associated with the
innovation proposed.
The difficulty of this final step should not be
underestimated. There are many applicable
technologies that have been used for many
years elsewhere in the World, and even in the
US, but are not accepted practice for particular
projects. Most owners do not see a benefit for
them in innovation unless there is a significant
financial saving. There is little incentive to
innovate and take risks that owners see as
unnecessary.
It is all too easy to label an owner’s dissent
and resistance to change as ignorance. But we
should not confuse ignorance with reasonable
caution. The engineering representatives of our
industry must learn better ways to
communicate the value of innovation to our
owners. We should also honestly represent the
risks so that non-technical owners can make an
informed decision with all the available
evidence presented. Otherwise, they may feel
that they are being led towards an answer that
is not in their best interests.
Technical innovation needs budgets for
research and development - with the
opportunity to take risks. The global budget for
scientific research and development is almost
US$2 Trillion. As a critical applied science for
the preservation of our civilization, I would
hope that there is a way to direct some more
of this funding into the underground industry.
To this end, a potential gamechanger is on the
horizon: SpaceX.
Where SpaceX can change the game on our
behalf is in their ability to just try things – like
building a tunnel in their own parking lot.
Simply observing what they will do next is
fascinating, but provision of guidance and
direction is possibly even more exciting. By their
own admission, SpaceX have no idea what
they are doing. But they are really smart
people, unburdened with conventional
thinking. With a brief education in tunneling
and a fresh viewpoint, there is no reason why
SpaceX could not make a giant leap forward.
In time we shall see what they are able to
achieve. Whether SpaceX hits the 90%
reduction in cost, or a lesser but still significant
goal, I for one hope that they are able to make
this leap. Think of the projects that would get
the green light if tunnels could be built
substantially cheaper than currently possible.
With a good attitude towards innovation’s
benefits and risks, and some carefully injected
funds, how complicated can it be?
 T
Tunnel
unnel | T
Trenchless
renchless | Geotechnical | Geostructural | Construction | Engineering & Design | BIM
AJ McGinn: 315.434.8885 | Ike Isaacson: 414.395.3180 | Gregg Sherry: 303.703.1405 | Alan Howard: 303.703.1405 | Nancy Nuttbrock: 281.994.7993

Creating Space Underground - Coast to Coast

www.brierleyassociates.com
www.brierleyassociates.com

NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL 7

 BLACKLICK

Mixed challenges
AT BLACKLICK
BLACKLICK CREEK SANITARY INTERCEPTOR SEWER
Client: City of Columbus
Contractor: Blacklick Constructors
(Michels/ Jay Dee LLC)
Designer: EMH&T with AECOM, Aldea, Eagon
and associates and HR Gray
Construction Manager: Black & Veatch with iTunnel inc, Hatch
Chester, Dynotec, HR Gray and Prime
Procurement: design-bid-build
Notice to Proceed: May 2016
Completion: 2020
Cost of construction: $109m, including 15% contingency

With the TBM fully

launched, the team on
Blacklick Creek Sanitary
Interceptor Sewer is
preparing to tackle a
whole host of different
ground conditions.
Kristina Smith caught up
with contractor, designer
and construction
manager to ask about the
challenges ahead.

THERE ARE AROUND 240 wells within a

quarter-of-a-mile of the alignment of the
new Blacklick Creek Sanitary Interceptor
sewer in Franklin County, Ohio, and 610
within a half-mile radius. The water table
here lies just 10 feet below the surface and
much of this largely rural population rely on
wells for their water supply.
“That number of wells within the project
corridor led us to put a lot of focus on con-
PAC in use
Figure 1 – The Blacklick alignment

8 NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL


The TBM lowering shaft
trolling the water inflow into the tunnel
when specifying the machine,” says Mike
Keller, partner of lead designer EMH&T. The
specifications set a maximum limit for inflows
into the heading and shaft of between 10
gpm and 30 gpm depending on the location.
To make life more interesting for contractor
Blacklick Constructors, a joint venture of
Michels Corporation and Jay Dee Contrac-
tors, Inc, the ground conditions along the
4.5mile (7.2km) route are extremely variable.
The TBM can expect to encounter silt, sand,
gravel, cobbles, boulders, clay, decomposed
shale, weathered shale, unweathered shale,
and any combination of these, with changes
occurring frequently. Over 34,000 cobbles
and 1,000 boulders ranging from 1 to 6 ft
(0.3 to 1.8m) are expected within the tunnel
face along the alignment.
Blacklick Constructors is using a
Herrenknecht EPBM to create the 10ft (3m)
ID tunnel. “We chose Herrenknecht because
they offered the most attractive solutions to
some of the challenges,” says Ed Whitman,
project manager for Blacklick Constructors.
“We went with the machine we thought
would be the most efficient for this job.
“We intend operating in EPB mode for the
soft ground portion of the alignment. When
we get to the shale sections, we will have to
find out how the ground behaves to deter-
mine the appropriate method. At this stage,
we are uncertain whether the shale will swell,
flake, be dusty, sticky, expand in water, and
generally speaking, how well it will exca-
vate.”
Since it may encounter water pressures of
over 4 bar, the small-diameter EPBM has a 50
foot-long (15m) shield to accommodate a hy-
perbaric man lock, should it be required for
interventions to the cutter head.
“We are most concerned about the soft
ground portions. If we were to encounter a
boulder or boulder field and the cutterhead
suffered significant damage, we would have
to do an emergency intervention,” says Whit-
man. “The permeability of the ground is
greater than 10-3(cm/sec)2 which would pre-
clude a free air intervention.”
Serving a growing community
The new sewer will serve a 27,000-acre
(11,000 hectare) area in the Northeast of
Franklin County, one of the region’s fastest
growing areas. The population here, which
reached 2 million in 2015, is now no longer
concerned only with farming and rural life;
new office developments, light manufactur-
ing facilities, data centres and master planned
communities are now part of the mix.
The sewer, which largely runs under the
Reynoldsburg New Albany Road, will tie into
an existing 66inch (1.7m) diameter sewer just
south of Blacklick Ridge Boulevard (see map).
From here it will head North and will connect
to the Rocky Fork Diversion in the future,
once that has been built. As well as serving
North eastern areas of the City of Columbus,
BLACKLICK
the sewer will also take wastewater from the
Jefferson Water and Sewer District and the
City of New Albany. (FIG 1)
“New Albany is one of the fastest growing
areas for technology manufacturing so the
need to support that ongoing growth is im-
portant,” says Keller. “There’s a lot of eco-
nomic and regional benefit in the project.”
The City of Columbus is funding the $109M
construction costs through a low-interest
loan from the Ohio Water Pollution Control
Loan fund.
For the design team, one of the challeng-
ing aspects was co-ordination. “As well as a
number of different designers, the process
was multi-jurisdictional; we had to interact
with lots of different stakeholders to co-ordi-
nate the overall design,” says Keller.
Planning for the Blacklick Creek Sanitary In-
terceptor Sewer began back in 2006, but the
project stalled in 2009 due to the global fi-
nancial crisis. In 2012, the City of Columbus
asked EMH&T to dust off the designs and
move it on to final design stage.
The traditionally procured design-bid-build,
lump-sum fixed price contract was awarded
to Blacklick Constructors, LLC in early 2016,
with the Notice to Proceed following in May
that year. Having started on site just after
that NTP date, Blacklick Constructors have to
date constructed two shafts at the launch
point of the TBM run, and is close to com-
pleting the first of two intermediate shafts.
The Herrenknecht machine arrived on site
NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL 9
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Photo courtesy of Nicholson Construction Co

www.tunnellingjournal.com
. . . industry news as it happens!

10 NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL


January 12 and by mid-May was 450 feet
(137m) into its drive, fully assembled. “Ac-
cording to the GBR, we have encountered al-
most all the variety of geologies we are
supposed to be expecting throughout the
drive,” says Whitman. “So far the TBM has
been working very well, with no surprises.”
Blacklick Constructors used Shaft 1, 25
feet (8m) by 50 feet (15m) and the adjacent
manhole 12, which is 20 feet (6m) by 35 feet
(11m) (see map). The connection tunnel be-
tween Shaft 1 and Manhole 12 was initially
going to be constructed by cut-and-cover,
but in the event was hand dug.
“The starter/tail tunnel runs under a fairly
busy road and when we got here and looked
at it we decided there would be too much
traffic disruption including emergency vehi-
cles, and too many problems due to multiple
buried utilities including (2) 35 KV power
lines, so we opted to do a hand tunnel,” says
Rich Houghton, Construction Manager at
Black & Veatch which leads the Cities man-
agement team.
The TBM was assembled in Shaft 1, with
blind rings installed through the shaft which
were removed once the back end of the
TBM’s ancillaries was clear of the shaft.
Muck was extracted through Manhole 12
during the first 400 ft as the machine
launched.
“This operation was not very efficient be-
cause Manhole 12 was not designed for pro-
duction, it was intended to install the
manhole structure,” says Whitman. “We had
to modify the shaft to make it large enough
to serve the TBM launch, but whereas a ring
typically needs 3.5 to 4 muck boxes to do
one push, we could only fit one locomotive
and a muck box in the shaft.”
However, Whitman points out that the first
few hundred feet of a drive are typically slow
anyway as the miners got up to speed with
how everything works. “Towards the end we
were able to do five or six rings a shift, de-
spite the impediments, so it worked out
pretty well,” he says.
Blacklick Constructors elected to use loci’s
and muck boxes, rather than conveyors, to
bring the muck out simply due to the restric-
tive size of the tunnels. “We generally prefer
conveyor belts because they are more effi-
cient but in this case there were not a lot of
options,” says Whitman. “Once we install
the ventilation into the tunnel, there isn’t
much room for anything else. We also had to
procure custom muck boxes and locis.”
Mining Equipment provided the locis,
switches, muck cars, segment cars and venti-
lation equipment. “We have a long-standing
relationship with them,” says Whitman. “If
we don’t have it ourselves and we need to
buy it, we typically go through them.”
The intermediate shafts, Shaft 2 at 5,000
feet (1500m) into the drive and Shaft 3 at
The TBM being lowered and readied for launch in the starter shaft
14,000 feet (4270m) into the drive, involve
multiple structures: a shaft which connects to
existing sewers which flows into a drop shaft
with a vortex structure and dissipation pool
at the bottom, connected itself to the main
tunnel by a smaller diameter tunnel.
Blacklick Constructors is drilling Shafts 2
and 3 but hasn’t decided yet how Shaft 4
will be constructed. “We are planning to do
a preliminary investigation, drilling around
the shaft in June to get a better idea of how
to tackle the current ground conditions,”
says Whitman. “Then construction will start
later in the summer”. Nonetheless there has
been discussion from the City on redesigning
this shaft for future connections.
Meanwhile the contractor will construct a
bulkhead at the end of the tail tunnel be-
tween Shaft 1 and Manhole 12, construct
the Manhole 12 structure, and restore the
top of the shaft so that the area can be used
as storage for the tunnel segments.
Fibre reinforced segments
The segments travel around 350 miles
(560km) to site from where they are manu-
factured by Technopref. By mid-May 1,400
rings had been case and 500 were on site or
installed.
“They are high quality segments and the
finish is really good,” says Houghton. “The
way they insert the fibres into the mix using
a conveyor seems to work well.”
The segments are reinforced with Bekaert
Maccaferri’s Dramix 5D high-strength steel fi-
bres which were designed for structural ap-
plications. The original specification called for
a mix of steel fibres and a curved rebar lad-
BLACKLICK
der, but this approach was abandoned.
“We had a problem finding someone who
could do the welding of the curved rebar
ladders,” says Keller. “We calculated that we
could go with full fibre design and seems to
be working out pretty well.”
“For a sewer, steel fibres are a better prod-
uct than rebar from a corrosion standpoint,”
says Houghton. “It’s likely that the tunnel
will last a lot longer than if it had been rein-
forced traditionally. And there are also less
breakages during installation.”
As well as ensuring that the City of Colum-
bus’ design team were convinced and sup-
portive of the steel fibre reinforced concrete,
the team had to apply for a special waiver of
the American Iron and Steel provisions to use
fibres which are currently manufactured out-
side the US.
Over 100 boreholes
The biggest challenge for the constructors is
the same as for the designers: how to en-
sure the local residents’ wells remain suit-
ably charged whilst mining through difficult
and changeable ground.
In a bid to mitigate this risk, EMH&T con-
ducted a wide-ranging geotechnical investi-
gation programme on behalf of the City.
The programme comprised vertical and in-
clined auger drilled borings, rotosonic
drilled borings, groundwater monitoring
well installation, hydrogeological investiga-
tion, downhole geophysics loggings, geo-
physical probes, a geophysical pilot study
and a large scale geophysical study.
A total of 107 bore holes were drilled,
100 along the final alignment. “The design-
NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL 11
 BLACKLICK
The TBM gantries with
segments being delivered
ers have done an extensive investigation
campaign and we have lots of borings and
information to go through,” says Whitman.
“But there’s always a level of uncertainty: a
boring only gives you the geological condi-
tions at that location, but the sections in be-
tween borings might hold surprises.”
It’s the transition points that will be inter-
esting says Whitman. Here the miners will
be switching between soil conditioning
agents: surfactant-based where the ground
is sticky or polymers where high volumes of
water is encountered. Project engineer Dr.
Ehsan Alavi, whose Ph.D. research was fo-
cused on soil conditioning and cutterhead
wear in EPB tunneling, will be on hand to
advise and instruct the crew on judicious
use and adjustment of soil conditioning reg-
imen in different geologies.
The area’s geological history provides an
explanation of the many variations along the
tunnel run. First the bedrock, which includes
Cuyahoga Formation, Sunbury Shale, Berea
Sandstone, and Bedford Shale was eroded
and weathered by a river system. Then came
the glaciers, filling the valleys created by the
rivers with glacial material which includes
large cobbles and boulders as well as
glaciofluvial and glaciolacustrine soils.
The predominant bedrock along the
alignment will be the Sunbury Shale, ac-
counting for around 46% of the drive. The
TBM should pass through five sections of
the shale, alternating with softer ground.
Blacklick Constructors is fortunate to have
experienced miners in its crews, some of
whom came from the OSIS Augmentation
and Relief Sewer (OARS) project which was
finishing as this one began. The contractor
has also been able to bring its TBM opera-
12 NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL
tors and key personnel from other jobs.
“The unions are really good to work with on
that aspect as well,” comments Whitman.
To deal with the changing ground condi-
tions, the contractor has chosen Tungsten
Carbide Insert Pressure Compensated Mono
Block Disc cutters that perform in the di-
verse geologies as the main cutting tools. In
addition, and based on the contractor’s pre-
vious experience, it is using additional pre-
cutters manufactured by Japanese supplier
Starloy, as face cutters and overcutters to
protect the cutterhead further.
“State-of-the-art engineering and tremen-
dous effort has put in place under the super-
vision of Dr Alavi to armour the cutterhead
for the diverse geology in this project,” says
Whitman.
Should an intervention be required in a
soft ground section with high water pres-
sures, the first choice would be to limp to the
nearest safe haven: one of the two interme-
diate shafts. If that wasn’t possible, grouting
ahead 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12m) in front of
the TBM would be the next step, says Whit-
man.” If that’s not possible, we would likely
have to resort to grouting the face in to per-
form an emergency intervention and repair
the damaged tools to get to the next safe
haven.”
A last resort would be to work under com-
pressed air. Hence the manlock and facilities
at ground level which can accommodate hy-
perbaric workers and physicians, and a DART
(Diver Attendant Recompression Trans-
portable) vessel which could be used to
transport divers from the cutter head to a hy-
perbaric chamber on the surface. Blacklick
Constructors has employed a specialized
commercial diving company to oversee the
diving operation and to control the decom-
pression process, but is training up its work-
force to do the work on the cutter head.
This type of intervention would be made
even more challenging due to the small di-
ameter of the machine. This is something the
designers thought long and hard about be-
fore deciding to increase the specified size of
the sewer to a minimum 10ft (3m) I.D; since
this tunnel is tying into the 66inch (1.7m)
sewer it didn’t need to be any bigger than
that to accommodate the flows.
Due to the subsurface conditions and hy-
drogeology, we wanted to use an EPBM and
we evaluated everything from 9 feet up to
14 feet diameter machine,” says Keller. “We
bid it with the opportunity to build a 10 ft
(3m) or 12 ft (3.7m) diameter finished tunnel
to provide flexibility for the contractors.”
“The size of the tunnel does restrict some
of the available muck removal methods but it
isn’t much different than the conventional
methods used in tunneling decades ago,”
says Whitman. “Space is very limited, if you
need to upsize a pump on the machine, per
say, it is difficult because there’s not much
room to fit it in, but that’s just another chal-
lenge of the job.”
Miners must also be on the alert for the
presence of gases, as some of the boreholes
indicated the presence of methane and sev-
eral others contained carbon monoxide.
“We have to plan ahead and have contin-
gencies for every anticipated problem,” says
Whitman, adding: “The bigger problems you
have are often the ones you hadn’t antici-
pated.”
Some $750,000 has been put aside to deal
with potential groundwater issues; 10 mobile
water tanks have already been purchased
with a plumber on hand and a well company
which could drill new wells if necessary as
some of the existing ones are shallow or
semi-shallow. “It’s important that we are as
responsive as possible to the residents,” says
Houghton. “We have to ensure that people
are back with water within 24 hours.”
Diligence will be the order of the day for
the entire drive, not only because of the
groundwater issues but also because the
road they will be tunneling under is one of
the busiest in the County. “We have to be
extremely vigilant to ensure we don’t have
any volume losses,” says Whitman.
If all goes to plan, the TBM should break
through into the reception shaft in 17
months’ time, around December 2018. The
project is well ahead of contractual mile-
stones, says Whitman, which required the
connecting tunnel between Shaft 1 and
Manhole 12 to be complete by July this year
and the launch to be done by September.
“It is a challenging project but we think
we can make it a great job and finish early,”
says Whitman.
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dedicated to industry-leading safety
performance and unmatched quality
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we build, to the committed professionals who
design, engineer and construct them, Kiewit
ensures the ordinary is always extraordinary.

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NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL 13

 NEW YORK

SHOTCRETE
Innovations
HISTORICALLY, PERMANENT concrete lin-
ings for underground structures have been
Andy Thompson, Vice President of Mott MacDonald
installed using form and pour methods, but in New York, and Frank Townsend, Vice President of
the use of shotcrete or sprayed concrete for
structural linings is becoming increasingly
Operations for specialty contractor Superior Gunite,
common. Although cast in place methods discuss innovations and issues that have been
are well proven, they do have their down-
sides, especially where non-uniform shapes encountered when using sprayed concrete for the
are required. installation of permanent structural linings for non-
Although form and pour methods can be
used for virtually every combination of uniform openings in underground construction
shapes and spaces, there are drawbacks to
its use especially when non-uniform cross
sections and junctions etc. are required. De-
signing and installing custom built form-
work is time consuming and depending on
project logistics can cause pinch points in
the schedule. As Clients strive to manage
the scarce capital they have to manage ex-
isting and build new facilities, designers and
constructers are increasingly being chal-
lenged to minimize the excavation and lin-
ing quantities. This brings new challenges to
the use of cast in place concrete due to the
complex nature of the shapes being de-
signed.
The use of shotcrete or sprayed concrete
for the installation of the permanent struc-
tural lining for non-uniform openings is a
well-established process, but in the last few
years the boundaries of its use, especially in PAC in use
the US have been stretched. Mott MacDon-
ald in conjunction with Superior Gunite
have been at the forefront of expanding the achieving consolidation, compaction, and a use of lattice girders to support the steel re-
use of this application method in the under- uniform distribution of the concrete con- inforcement and assist in controlling the
ground environment. stituents. profile/geometry of the tunnel cross section
The end product is a one half inch, minus and is applied in layers to build up the con-
Freeform concrete Portland Cement Concrete (PCC), capable crete thickness of the final linings. Rein-
So what are the benefits of the use of of achieving conventional and high forcement in such applications is usually
freeform concrete linings, how do they dif- strengths, while maintaining or exceeding small bar diameter (five or less) and well-
fer from shotcrete final linings, and what required end properties by design. Materials spaced out, to minimize the opportunity for
are the potential drawbacks? are pumped wet to the nozzle where air is shadowing of the shotcrete around the
Freeform concrete, also referred to as added at high pressure to achieve the re- girders and rebar.
Pneumatically Applied Concrete (PAC), as quired spray pattern and high velocity for It requires a high level of application skill,
developed for use on many of the major the concrete application. This application workmanship, and a rigorous quality control
capital projects under construction in New mimics ACI 506 and sites the ACI specifica- process. It is also increasingly being installed
York, involves the application of structural tion as a reference. using robotic spraying, which therefore lim-
concrete utilizing high velocity pneumatic How is this different to a shotcrete final its the finish that can be achieved to that of
projection from a nozzle as the means for lining (SFL)? A typical SFL lining involves the a nozzle finish. For example, a typical se-

14 NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL


in the US
quence for SFL may include: (1) installation
of lattice girders at 5ft centers with a rebar
reinforcement mat placed against the water-
proofing membrane at the extrados side of
the girders, and partial spray-
ing of the lattice girders;
(2) shotcreting of an in-
fill first layer be-
tween the
lattice girders;
(3) shotcreting
of a second
layer; (4) instal-
lation of rebar re-
inforcement on the
intrados side of the lining;
and then (5) installing a final
shotcrete layer to provide the
minimum cover over the reinforce-
ment. The number of shotcrete layer instal-
lations would depend on the total design
thickness of the final lining.
Freeform concrete or PAC, by contrast, is
utilized with the same rebar design that
would be used for a form and pour lining
and no specific provisions need to be made
to accommodate its use. It can be used
around extremely heavy and congested rein-
Typical example of PAC lined structure
Complex Tunnel
network lined
using PAC.
force-
ment and
against PVC or
spray applied waterproof-
ing membranes. It is applied in
layers and can be hand finished to
achieve any standard required, including
textured architectural finishes. It does how-
ever require highly skilled nozzle men and
support crews to ensure a safe and high
quality finish is achieved as well as an ex-
tremely rigorous quality control process both
before application and during.
PAC excels in tunnel applications where
conventional forming methods are difficult
logistically as well as costly to construct.
Where conventional methods use large,
NEW YORK
heavy,
and in most
cases steel forms
that have limited flexi-
bility in final position, PAC
finds its most effective uses.
The benefits the use of PAC brings
include no need to engineer, fabricate,
install and remove a form system in a re-
stricted underground space, which means
the forms are also not going to block the
tunnel during concrete placement opera-
tions. Scaffolding is needed, but typically
there is a need for scaffolding for rebar in-
stallation anyway, and in any case scaffold-
ing is lighter and easier to transport and
install than a form system. PAC can be used
with or without waterproofing, be it sheet
membrane or spray applied, although en-
hanced QC will be required for sheet mem-
brane systems especially in overhead
applications to ensure the membrane is tight
against the substrate.
PAC has been successfully used for cav-
erns, wyes, cross passages, vent shafts, air
plenums, inclined escalator shafts, TBM
crossovers and tunnel junctions, all of which
are locations that render uniform linear ap-
plications vulnerable to customization re-
quirements. In these locations, PAC affords a
monolithic placement process to be utilized
while allowing the Designer and Contractor
to achieve the needed variations in conform-
ing to the ever changing conditions of a
project, which would not otherwise be
achievable with a fixed forming system. For
a tunnel system PAC is an ideal placement
method for the many and varied geome-
tries.
While PAC is extremely versatile it is not a
process that can be used in all locations, for
example, repetitive uniform TBM lining oper-
ations are better served using a traditional
form and pour approach as the rate of
placement of PAC can never equal that of a
form.
As noted above the use of PAC requires a
rigorous Quality Control Process. For exam-
NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL 15
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Preconstruction vertical (a) and overhead (b) test panel
Pre-construction field trial
PAC mock-up and hand
spraying of vertical walls
Encapsulation around reinforcement, embed-
ments and encasement of a waterbarrier (on
right lower side)
ple when PAC was introduced to a recent
project in New York it became clear that ad-
ditional measures would need to be in-
cluded in the Quality Control process, both
to ensure a safe and high quality installa-
tion, but also to satisfy the requirements of
the New York State Building Code (NYSBC).
The NYSBC includes requirements that need
to be met to permit the installation of shot-
crete as a structural component. These re-
quirements include #5 rebar as the
maximum size of rebar to be used, a “6
inch” minimum rebar spacing and a prohibi-
tion on the use of full contact lap splices.
Crucially, however, the NYSBC includes a
provision for a waiver to these requirements
should the designer be satisfied that full en-
capsulation of the designed rebar can be
achieved. So to satisfy this requirement the
following process was put in place.
In addition to vertical and overhead test
panels for proving the shotcrete mix design
to be used, a full size preconstruction
mockup of the lining was required to be un-
dertaken, utilizing the approved mix designs
and the equipment proposed for use in the
works. Working with the designer, the most
heavily congested rebar sections – both ver-
tically and horizontally – were identified and
installed together with any embedded ele-
ments required for the final lining together
with the waterproofing system. All nozzle-
men were required to demonstrate their
ability to completely encapsulate the rebar
and provide the requisite compaction of
concrete required prior to the use of PAC
being authorized for use in the permanent
works. Once the mockup had been sprayed
sections were cored and saw cut to demon-
strate that the encapsulation had been
achieved.
During production operations regular
testing of the design mix was undertaken,
but limited testing of the finished product
were performed. The nature of the applica-
tion method, plus using experienced ACI
Certified nozzle men, ensures that shadow-
ing and voids are dealt with as the shotcrete
is being placed, due to the close proximity
of the nozzleman with shooting from the
nozzle taking place mostly from inside the
reinforcement. Coring through the finished
product was minimized and was typically
undertaken in early applications only, using
“sacrificial” additional rebar to check the
encapsulation.
NEW YORK
PAC is typically used with a waterproofing
membrane which can either be a PVC or
spray applied. In both cases a layer of mesh
is installed approximately 1 to 2 inches
away from the waterproofing and hung on
the waterproofing suppliers proprietary an-
chor system. This mesh is spaced off the
waterbarrier using bulsters to help hold the
membrane back and to give the shotcrete a
surface to grip against. This enables over-
head applications to be undertaken with lit-
tle difficulty. Where a PVC membrane
system is utilized, all waterbarriers used as
part of the waterproofing sectioning system
are equipped with re-groutable hoses to en-
sure adequate embedment of the waterbar-
riers with the PAC. After the concrete lining
has gained its 28-day compressive strength,
grout is injected through the re-groutable
hoses to fill any voids between the water-
barrier and the PAC final lining.
Similar to form and pour and shotcrete
final linings, contact grouting is required
when PAC is used to fill any voids between
the waterproofing membrane and the con-
crete final lining. This contact grouting is
not limited to roof sections only, but also a
radial and more frequent distribution of
grouting ports and pipes around the crown
and above the spring line. This was imple-
mented with the injection of low viscosity
cementitious grouts between the final PAC
lining and the membrane to ensure a tight
contact between the initial and final lining.
Application examples
This method of concrete placement has
been used in many different applications in-
cluding a 30 inch thick 60ft SEM tunnel
constructed through frozen ground (see
two pictures below):
NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL 17
 NEW YORK

It has also been used for the creation of an

inclined escalator shaft

Client benefits
For the Client the benefits of using the PAC And also used to
method are mainly associated with schedule form circular
and quality. This method is synonymous with columns as part
ACI 506R-16 Guide, using an ACI Certified of a ventilation
nozzleman in the underground which is not plenum
currently a requirement by ACI.
As no forms are used, there is no need to
go through a drawn out process for their de-
sign, fabrication, delivery installation and re-
moval. As such, the PAC method can be used
throughout the duration of the project, en-
abling the final lining to be installed relatively
quickly after excavation. This can enable fol-
low on contracts to enter into these com-
pleted sections for access or for completion
work earlier than would be the case with a
form and pour lining. In addition, the lack of
forms means there is no blocked access
routes through the area to be lined, although
the scaffolding required to install the control
wires and to undertake the concrete place- no waiting until the form is struck to discover, reality the most practical method of con-
ment may cause some blockage, it is of a far voids, honeycombing etc. these are fixed as crete placement. The PAC method though
lesser duration. the work progresses with PAC, thereby mini- offers a viable alternative placement
The finished space is not now limited by mizing the need to go back and undertake method for use in non-uniform cross sec-
the need to build and install forms. Continu- remedial works in completed sections of tun- tions, shafts and other areas where the in-
ously changing cross sections can be devel- nel. In fact, the PAC method is often used to stallation of a form would be problematic. It
oped that minimize excavation, lining rectify areas where problems have been en- is certainly not a panacea and requires a rig-
thickness and schedule as the PAC method countered with the use of formed concrete. orous engineered approach to the design of
can be used to match the lining to the space the structures and methods to take advan-
requirements and the challenge is now back Summary tage of its flexibility and quality benefits.
with the designer to economize on these ele- Form and pour concrete will continue to be The challenge moving forward is to take ad-
ments knowing that PAC is a tool in his ar- the prime method of placement of final lin- vantage of this method to provide efficient
mory. ings in underground structures. For repeti- and economic designs that take into, and
With regard to Quality the finished product tive lining operations such as lining a TBM accept the limitations and benefits of the
can be seen as the work progresses, there is tunnel over several thousand feet this is in PAC placement method.

18 NORTH AMERICAN TUNNELING JOURNAL

www.ucaofsmecuttingedge.com
Platinum Sponsor

Since 1944, Dragados S.A. has completed over 530 underground projects in 19
countries and on four continents. Utilizing diverse methodologies and all types of
technologies, they have constructed over 857 miles of tunnels, shafts and galleries,
and stations through a variety of geological conditions. All this experience makes
Dragados S.A. a worldwide leader in underground construction.

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