MECHANISED TUNNELLING | BORING CO COMPETITION 2025
BORING PRACTICE The Boring Company’s Not-a-Boring Competition encourages innovation and offers
young engineers the opportunity to put theory into practice. Keren Fallwell reports on developments in the latest round of the annual small diameter shield face-off
TUM Boring from the Technical University of Munich has won The Boring Company’s Not-a-Boring Competition three times, but perhaps what is more impressive is that this year they set a new distance record for the competition. Achieving a competiton record of 22.5m, the team
nearly doubled their 2023 distance of 11.8m and out- bored their competitors’ single-digit achievements. TUM Boring project manager Felix Blanke attributes
the team’s convincing win to the thorough testing done in Munich before the container-load of equipment was shipped to Bastrop, Texas for the competition. “For a lot of our competitors, the first time they had
their machine up and running was at the competition site. For us it wasn’t about testing or improving
our machine, it was about executing our plan and completing the drilling,” said Blanke. Also, unlike other teams, TUM Boring opted for
pipejacking – an approach they have used in all the competitions. The basic layout is a jacking frame, a cutterhead and a cutter wheel, all able to fit into a 40ft-long shipping container that provides the form factor and also makes transport logistics easier. While the pipejacking concept has been retained – a
jacking frame inside the shipping container with the same hydraulic power-pack to propel the pipes forward – this year TUM Boring made some notable changes. The most significant change, said Blanke, was to install the power electronics for the electric cutterhead underground.
Above: TUM Boring’s pipejacking frame was housed in a 40ft-long container for the 2025 edition of The Boring Company’s Not-a-Boring Competition, where the team set a new winning record of 22.5m PHOTO CREDIT: TUM BORING
18 | July 2025
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