ROD YOUNG: BTS CHAIR | INTERVIEW


alk tunnels, and you are usually talking big. Big projects, big money, big diameters. Major tunnelling projects such as


Crossrail or, in the end one hopes, HS2 get opened by Prime Ministers and the like with press and publicity in attendance. The current Chair of the British Tunnelling Society may therefore be considered a little unusual. He doesn’t really do big. Microbore and small-bore tunnelling is Rod Young’s speciality, and has been for many years. “My background is mining” he says.


“I began as a mining engineer. Before I got into tunnels I had a decent period working in the gold mines in South Africa. “Mining tunnelling is not very different


from tunnelling for other purposes. You’d be surprised how many mining engineers are in the tunnelling industry. It’s a lot, although it is getting fewer now that there is so little mining in the UK anymore. But there is still a lot of ex-mining engineers among the older, more senior people.” It was in mining that Young got his


beginning in going underground. “I grew up in Poynton, Cheshire, not


a place you would expect to be related to mining,” he says, “but Poynton nestles in the foothills of the southern Pennines and today it is a thriving large village. Few visitors would realise that at one time Poynton had the largest coalfield in Cheshire, having 74 pits in its heyday. Coalmining ceased in 1935 and all pits were capped but there remain many interesting clues to this former industry, including buildings and tracks and the Anson Engine Museum. So I was aware of mining from an early time.” He studied Mining Engineering at


Newcastle upon Tyne from 1979- 1982, during the summer holidays working for the NCB. “I did my basic training at Orgreave & Treeton Collieries, then worked at Manton Colliery, at the time being one of only a few Million tonne per year pits, dintng roadway and shovelling spillage back onto conveyors – hard, mucky work.” After that work, South Africa beckoned. “I went straight overseas and worked


for Anglo American on Western Holdings Gold Mine, a mine with 4 deep shafts,” says Young. “I started doing the equivalent to the NCB basic training, was on the graduate training programme, so had periods working as stope & development miner, then shift overseer to mine overseer, obtaining my blasting certificate and mine manager certificate.


Back to the UK was when Young got


involved in tunnelling. “When I first came back I started on a 100”-wedgeblock tunnel, working for Nuttalls, who are now BAM, of course. After moving around a couple of times, all on small-diameter tunnels, I started my career at Barhale. I’ll have been with them 29 years, in June. Most of the people who have been


Chair of the BTS over the years have been involved in larger diameter projects – the likes of Crossrail, London Thames Tideway, HS2 – the prestige projects of the world just now and all the ones that have gone before. “And the Chairs have tended to alternate


between designers and people on the contracting side. I am neither: I am a practical person, and my background is very much in the smaller diameters. I’ve not done anything more than about 4 metres or 4.5 metres. “So I’m slightly different from my BTS


predecessors. But though tunnelling at two metres diameter and below may not be so glamorous it is still important. Cables, water and sewerage, communications – wherever something like that has to go under a road or railway you need it. You could call it bread and butter tunnelling. “We do a lot for Network Rail, for


example, and there is a lot more of it, widespread around the country. They tend to be quick, small projects; I’m involved in quite a few at the moment. £2 million is a typical upper budget, and that would include all the main laying of cable or piping as well as the tunnelling itself and the linking up at either end.


“In one sense microbore is not very


different from large-bore tunnelling. It needs the same set of skills and standards. We still use TBMs, though smaller ones, with no onboard operators of course – though pipejacking and now directional drilling are also widely used methods. However, in some microtunnels you cannot actually enter the tunnel yourself, and that does make a big difference.” Legally, if the diameter is anything below


1200mm you are not allowed inside it. That is the standard; and one thing it does is it imposes limits on the distance that you can drive your tunnel. “If you are pipejacking, everything is


being pushed from the pit bottom, so you’re limited to what the rams there can do; if something gets stuck, or hits an obstruction, you cannot send someone to crawl in and fix it: you have to find a way of digging down in the front of the TBM if you have any form of obstruction. And even if you are digging at 1500mm diameter, the TBMs of that size do not have access to the front face as on larger machines, so again even though you are allowed to crawl into the tunnel you will still have to dig down from the surface if you need to gain access to the cutters.” Most microbore tunnels are quite short –


road or river or rail crossings are typically only 50 metres or 100 metres long. Most of his work is within the Anglian Water company’s region, around Eastern England. “We are doing numerous crossings for


MINING TUNNELLING IS


NOT VERY DIFFERENT FROM TUNNELLING FOR OTHER PURPOSES. YOU’D BE SURPRISED HOW MANY MINING ENGINEERS ARE IN THE TUNNELLING INDUSTRY... ALTHOUGH IT IS GETTING FEWER NOW THAT THERE IS SO LITTLE MINING IN THE UK ANYMORE. BUT THERE IS STILL A LOT OF EX-MINING ENGINEERS AMONG THE OLDER, MORE SENIOR PEOPLE


various types of water mains, and these are within that range, 50 metres to 100 metres. But still they take a lot of effort: a lot of time is spent preparing the shafts and putting the props in on either side of a rail track. You can be looking at a 15- to 20- week project by the time you put the access points in, one each side and set up the pipe jacks and associated works. But the actual microtunnelling itself might take you four or five, maybe six shifts – and that’s it. “So small-bore needs a much greater


ratio of preparation time to tunnelling time; but these tunnels are needed, and they are needed everywhere. For example, just now Anglian Water is


working on a project called the Strategic Pipeline Alliance or SPA. East Anglia is the driest part of the UK, and they want to be able to move water from the wetter part of their region, in the north, to the drier south and east. So they are putting in a line from Elsham, which is up near Grimsby in Lincolnshire, all the way down to


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