Most UK engineers with a career in tunnelling will, like me, have spent time wondering where the next job is coming from – bemoaning the lack of continuity, the stop-start nature of the business, the "will it happen or won’t it?" uncertainty of major projects. We all know why that is: big projects or programmes require big budgets which need to be carefully considered before committing, and most will span changes in government which bring with them differing priorities for public spending. But recent years have seen a change that gives tunnellers a great opportunity to build on the best work outlook for several decades.
Of course, the stop-start nature of UK tunnelling work has had benefits. We have travelled overseas looking for work, with considerable success, and UK tunnellers can be found on many international projects, particularly in East Asia and Australasia. Tunnelling has been a fast-developing industry and there’s no doubt that a global approach, underpinned by international working, has reaped rewards. Tunnelling has become one of the most innovative and efficient processes in the construction sector.
But the downsides of a discontinuous workload in the UK have come at a price. Project knowledge disappears, lessons are not learned or consolidated, great teams disperse and the next major project tends to start closer to square one than it ought. Of course we have professional publications, academic papers, project reports and the like (which we’ve been getting much better at recently) and we have the individual experience of the people involved, but this is a long way away from an efficient transfer of appropriate knowledge from one project to another. [Clients and suppliers have also become more risk averse. Together with the stop-start approach this has led in some cases to solutions that are more costly than we were producing a couple of decades ago]
So, I view the National Infrastructure Plan 2014, launched alongside the Autumn Statement, with satisfaction and enthusiasm. Satisfaction because I see the efforts of ICE, IUK, BTS and many other organisations and individuals, and my own involvement, at last bringing a tangible, and what I hope to be a lasting, change. And enthusiasm because of the opportunities we now have ahead of us.
The Autumn Statement showed that we now have a better understanding, in the industry and Parliament, of the value of economic infrastructure. We also see an intention to plan strategically, spanning government terms with all-party support. And we can see the results of those: a project pipeline into the future, investment in skills development and training, and a proper valuing of engineers’ and technologists’ contribution.
All of which brings me back to tunnelling. Many of the major projects in the National Infrastructure Plan involve tunnels, quite rightly. And the tendency will be for more underground infrastructure in the future. We have the opportunity now to build on this – to address skills shortages, to lead on innovation, to engage with the creation of societal value.
We’ve been asking for these conditions for a long time, and right now is the closest we have been to having them. As I said in my Harding Lecture in 2012, we need to work hard to respond but the future looks rosy – this is the tunnellers’ time in the sun.
