All over the world, private and freight traffic will continue to increase. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, even now more than half of all people live in cities and the surrounding areas. Globalisation and urbanisation are causing these infrastructure developments. As a result, people, raw materials and goods are being moved around more than ever before. Civil engineering is confronted with increasing demands; this includes structures for transport and utility networks. Tunnels and bridges are key elements. Such projects are normally tendered internationally. For business reasons, the bidding companies must be able to use reliable and exactly definable construction machines or formwork and scaffolding systems.

On October 26, 2018 the Malaysian Ministry of Finance (MOF) announced that the Mass Rapid Transit Sungai Buloh-Serdang-Putrajaya (SSP) Line (MRT Line 2) project will be continued by MMC-Gamuda, after the company agreed to a larger cost reduction for the underground works. The Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) project is a strategic Government project which will increase connectivity of the Klang Valley’s public rail network.

On 10 October 2018, the Austrian national committee of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA) awarded their innovation prize to the STUVA for the “development of a water-permeable annular gap material for single-shell drained segment linings”. During a ceremony as part of the Austrian Tunnel Day 2018, the trophy was handed to the STUVA and their research partners IMM Maidl & Maidl (Germany), Porr Bau GmbH (Österreich) and MC-Bauchemie Müller GmbH & Co. KG (Germany). The prize committee of the Austrian Tunnel Day regularly awards the prize to particularly creative developments in tunnelling.

For almost 40 years the STUVA has carried out a survey of tunnelling in Germany. Annually collected data from clients, construction companies and designers are regularly published in consolidated form. An assignment prompted by a corresponding request from the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association.

After about 9 km each through tough gneiss, on September 11, 2018 the tunnel boring machines “Queen Eufemia” and “Queen Ellisiv” achieved a double breakthrough near the city center of Oslo. The Follo Line Project is currently Norway‘s largest infrastructure project and involves the construction of the country‘s longest railway tunnel. The two 20 km long tunnels connect Oslo with Ski further to the south. From 2021 they will shorten travel time for commuters by half.

The 100-year old, two-track Rudersdorf Tunnel between Siegen and Haiger restricts the route’s capacity owing to its small cross-section. Furthermore, the rail tunnel is requiring ever increasing maintenance. In a process lasting only seven months, a feasibility study was produced for the project, featuring six alternatives involving a more fundamental pre-planning process for the preferred option 3b “Construction of two new single-track tunnel tubes to the west of the existing tunnel including its decomissioning”. It has since passed the DB Netz AG’s “stress test”.

The equipment of infrastructure tunnels with absorbers for the extraction of heating or cooling energy is a consistent further development of the shallow geothermal hybrid systems in the field of ground engineering. The heat fluxes acting on a tunnel geothermal plant result from a complex interaction of the climatic conditions at the surface and inside the tunnel, the subsoil conditions and the operation of the geothermal plant. A prediction of possible heat extraction rates is thus only possible on the basis of transient simulations. In the article from tunnel issue 6/2018, a simulation application for the investigation of tunnel geothermal plants developed at the Institute of Geotechnical Engineering of the University of Stuttgart is presented, and the results of parameter studies regarding the heat extraction performance from a shallow urban transit tunnel are discussed.

„It is the first time ever that a symposium between the two ITA member nations China and Malaysia has been organized“, welcomed Dr. Teik Aun Ooi, Organizing Chairman of the SEASET 2018 (South East Asia Symposium & Exhibitions on the challenges and strategic solutions of high profile projects on Tunnels 2018) the more than 300 participants from China, Malaysia, the Southeast Asian Region and abroad in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The joint symposium with a total of 18 lectures, delivered from well-known speakers, was organised by the China Civil Engineering Society (CCES) and the Institution of Engineers, Malaysia (IEM) on September 18 and 19, 2018.