In the middle of May, a few weeks before the official ceremony to open the Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT), the Swiss Tunnelling Society (Fachgruppe für Untertagbau/FGU) presented their comprehensive engineering reference book “Tunnelling the Gotthard” to the public for the first time. On the occasion of the viewing in the presence of more than 150 guests at the Swiss Museum of Transport, speakers included the former Swiss Federal Council member Adolf Ogi, who gave a much noticed speech.
The 903 m long Pforzheim rail tunnel, constructed from 1858 to 1860 between Ispringen and Pforzheim on the Pforzheim–Mühlacker line, most recently underwent refurbishing in 1984 and is now to be...
Another milestone was accomplished on the new railway line Wendlingen–Ulm when the tunnellers crossed over the 30 796 m mark on 19 June. Hence, half of all tunnels on the new railway line are driven.
In the course of the refurbishment measures started in 2011 after more than 50 years of operation, the dam and the bed of the Sylvenstein Reservoir in Bavaria were provided with a new cut-off wall (two-phase diaphragm wall) and a precise seepage water measurement system. The seepage water measurement system consists of drainage piles and a 190 m long seepage water tunnel, constructed by the company Wayss & Freytag Ingenieurbau using the microtunnelling technique. In order to minimise problems with the tunnel boring machine and hinder ingress of water into the launching cavern and the target shaft, these unpredictable zones of the rock mass had to be stabilised and waterproofed.
As from 1 July 2016 Sandvik has merged its operations „Mining“ and „Construction”. Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology is now one of four remaining business areas. According to Sandvik it will be organized in a de-centralized business model with separate product areas. Each product area will have full responsibility and accountability for its respective business.
The Bochum engineering company Zerna Planen und Prüfen renamed itself at the start of 2016 as part of a long-term business strategy and is now known as ZPP Ingenieure GmbH. The group is based at nine...
The German Federal Administrative Court, sitting in Leipzig, ruled on 14 June 2016 as the final court of appeal that the involvement of the federal state and the respondent, the state capital of Stuttgart, in the financing of the Stuttgart 21 rail project does not constitute “inadmissible co-financing of third-party public works”. The court thus declared inadmissible a citizens‘ initiative, via which the opponents of the project hoped to achieve a referendum on the state capital’s withdrawal from its contractually agreed financial obligations.
With the exception of the Klaus chain of tunnels and the Gleinalm Tunnel, Austria‘s Pyhrn Autobahn A9 toward the Slovakian border is fully completed. Work on the Klaus tunnels, specifically on the...
In late June 2016 Implenia signed the contract for construction of the “Lot GC01” section of the Line 11 extension to the east of Paris. Line 11 is run by the “Régie autonome des transports parisiens” (RATP), the state operator of public passenger transport in the capital of France. This infrastructure contract forms part of the major “Grand Paris Express” project. Implenia is taking on the job together with consortium partners NGE (France), Demathieu & Bard (France) and Pizzarotti (Italy). The “Grand Paris Express” project aims to improve links between the French capital and neighbouring residential areas in the Greater Paris region (Île-de-France) by building a transport network of six driverless underground railway lines by 2030.
The Institute and Laboratory of Geotechnics of the Technical University of Darmstadt held the 23rd Darmstadt Geotechnics Colloquium on 10 March 2016, organised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Katzenbach. In...
