Obras Subterráneas

At the end of this month, Peru’s tunnelling society, the Asociacion Peruana de Tuneles y Obras Subterraneas (APTOS) is preparing to host the seventh Latin American Tunnelling Congress, Tunnel & Mining 2018. We are printing additional copies of this magazine to send to the event.

The show, which is the pride of the society, is returning to its favoured host city of Lima. I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the work that is driving the market of the country that, from its diverse geography alone, defi es pithy categorisation.

Readers will likely be familiar with the Olmos irrigation tunnel, a 13.9km triumph for the industry which now supplies 500 billion gallons of water to 560km2 of farmland annually. A couple of failed drilland- blast attempts half a century ago were overcome in the last decade by an Odebrecht team and a Robbins TBM to realise what media described as a “100-year dream”. So these readers, and maybe editors too, could be forgiven for thinking that the country had gone quiet. However, major projects are still providing the Peruvian tunneller with work in the years to come.

In a statement, the government client announced that the next 4km of the Lima Metro Line 2 (Stage 1B) should commence soon, following completion of Stage 1A by the contracting JV of ACS, FCC, Impregilo and Ansaldo Breda. Meanwhile, the studies for the Central Peru trans-Andean tunnel project seem to have been resurrected and are being carried out by Dohwa Engineering, Geodata and Italferr. Some USD 2bn has been set aside for the project, which could be a multipurpose road/rail project.

Additionally, Peru is looking at a healthy amount of hydropower work, with studies (according to the database of Tunnels and Tunnelling sister company Timetric) into the Churo, RS, Santa Maria I, La Herradura-El Gallo, Cedropampa, Mollepata, MEM, Tulumayo, Pasta Bueno, Santa Teresa, Apurimac, Utcubamba, Charcani, Vilcanota, Belo Horizonte, Sausa and Huarangalle and San Pedro complexes.

The country is currently working on or tendering about a dozen such schemes, with the energy sector accounting for about 20 per cent of the construction industry’s value in 2017. Timetric expects the market to see annual growth of almost 6 per cent.

Returning to the conference, if anyone is interested in furthering their knowledge of South American tunnelling, the event runs from 31 July to 2 August and information can be found here: www.tunnelmining.pe

And if anyone attending the congress would like to get in contact to talk about their work or project: editor@tunnelsandtunnelling.com