Planning for the twenties

14 August 2019


In this issue of Tunnels and Tunnelling International Paola De Pascali reports from the World Tunnel Congress, which was held in Naples in May and saw a number of publications from working groups and committees. The ITA Committee for Technology (ITAtech was particularly prolific.


I travel to and report on the Changsha International Construction Equipment Exhibition (CICEE), where Chinese manufacturers are still mostly occupied with supplying equipment for domestic and neighbouring demand, but are fi nally beginning to look towards the more mature Western markets for future sales.

Matt Houchin of WSP writes about the management of heat in underground structures, which is dependent on a number of factors, and the extent to which it can actually be re-purposed usefully.

In a major new paper, Mohammed Arasteh, assisted by his colleagues in Mott MacDonald, contractor Skanska and client Cadent Gas, looks at the monitoring of ground surface movements induced by the construction of the Chelsea to Battersea Pipeline Tunnel Project, with a particular focus on the launch and reception shafts. The paper finds signifi cant differences in settlement based on shaft construction methodology.

For our technical focus this month, lifting and conveying, we cover the change in the lifting plan at the Sydney Metro, as well as the development of the sandwich belt high angle conveyor by Dos Santos International.

The latter is the result of a number of reader requests following previous coverage of the Paris Metro project. And that leads me to the point of my comment this month.

As I write this in July, it is the time of year that I begin to work on the following year’s editorial calendar. We usually have one planned technical topic per issue (joined by a selection of the many that get sent to us throughout the year) and we are also always on the lookout for projects to feature, either written by the Tunnels and Tunnelling team, or by the engineers on site or in the offi ce.

So if there is a technical topic that you would like to see covered in the magazine, your research programme has come to any interesting conclusions, or if your tunnel project is at an interesting stage and would make an interesting report, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.