| NEWS


Mammoth task finishes at Stuttgart 21 GERMANY – The final breakthrough was recently achieved on the Stuttgart 21 project, marking completion of more than 56km of tunnelling for the national rail company Deutsche Bahn (DB). The Züblin and Max Bögl joint venture


made the breakthrough on the Stuttgart Airport tunnel in mid-September. DB’s Stuttgart 21, which is overhauling


and reconfiguring the city’s rail system, had included the construction of eight twin-bore tunnels: Bad Cannstatt Tunnel; Feuerbach Tunnel; Airport tunnel; Filder Tunnel; Obertürkheim Tunnel; S-Bahn tunnel between the Mittnachtstrasse stop and the S-Bahn station Hauptbahnhof; Rosenstein S-Bahn tunnel; and, Untertürkheimer Curve Tunnel. Tunnel boring started in December 2013. At a celebration attended by politicians


and officials from DB, the European Commission (EC) and Stuttgart Airport, the rail company’s Head of Infrastructure, Berthold Huber, acknowledged the project’s achievements. “Fifty-six kilometres of tunnel, built in


the middle of the big city, under the trade fair, in the middle of an airport site, under the Neckar [river], under the television tower – the challenges were numerous,” he said.


CRCHI shield prepares for Guangdong project, China CHINA – China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Corp (CRCHI) has manufactured the first TBM for the Guangdong Water Resources Allocation Project. The 135m-long slurry TBM has a


diameter of 6.28m and is to bore a 3.9km- long tunnel on the D1 section tunnel of the water conveyance project in the Beibu Gulf. The tunnel in the D1 section crosses


through heavily and lightly weathered metamorphic sandstones, while the rest of its alignment passes through fault breccia and limestone formations, with a total of 25 developed faults. CRCHI has equipped the slurry TBM


with technology including a multi-access and multi circuit new slag discharge mode design, which is designed to handle potential blockage of silo and pipes caused by large particles. Construction of the overall Guangdong


Water Resources Allocation Project started in Q3-2022 and is scheduled to take 96 months to complete. The project is one of 150 water supply projects underway or planned in China.


TBM arrives in Norwegian capital for water job NORWAY – A Herrenknecht TBM to work on part of a new tunnel water supply network has arrived in Oslo. The NOK26.8bn (€2.34bn/US$2.51bn)


water project is a major undertaking by the City of Oslo Municipality to provide water supply security through a new clean water tunnel from Holsfjord, west of the capital, and an underground treatment plant at Huseby. At present, a single water source and one treatment plant supply around 90% of the capital. The shield will be used by contractor


AF Ghella JV on its Lot E6 contract to bore an 11km-long tunnel from Stubberud to Huseby. When fully assembled, the machine is 200m long and weighs around 2000 tonnes, and has a diameter of just over 7m. Lot E6 also has four rock caverns, two


clean water basins, a pumping station and a ventilation station. In April, Skanska Norway, which


has the Lot E5 contract, launched two 5.2m-diameter Herrenknecht TBMs to dig the 19km-long tunnel from Holsfjord to the plant at Huseby.


Cruachan 2 PS preparations advance for Scotland UK – Renewable energy company Drax has awarded a contract to Cowi for consultancy services in expansion of the Cruachan pumped storage scheme, in Scotland. The £500m expansion project, known


as Cruachan 2, is to bring an additional 600MW to the scheme that already has 440MW of pumped storage capacity beneath Ben Cruachan. Working with the owner’s engineer,


Italian civil engineering company Studio Pietrangeli, Cowi is to advise on geotechnical, tunnelling and jetty/marine structures in advance of the Front-End Engineering Design (FEED). Construction work on Cruachan 2 is due


to start in 2025 for the new plant to come online by 2030. Cowi UK managing director Andy Sloan


said Scotland was undergoing a hydro- pumped storage renaissance. “There’s a profound opportunity for


hydroelectric developments in the UK, particularly in Scotland, which will not only address our need for long-term storage in the UK energy market but support our journey to net-zero by 2045,” he said. Drax’s Development Manager, Steve


Marshall, said pumped storage hydro plants play a critical role in stabilising the


electricity system as well as helping to balance supply and demand through storing excess power from the national grid. “When Scotland’s wind turbines are


generating more power than we need, Cruachan steps in to store the renewable electricity so it doesn’t go to waste. With the right support from the UK government, Drax is ready to invest around £500m to more than double Cruachan’s generating capacity,” he said.


Preferred bidder named for Melbourne’s SRL East AUSTRALIA – The preferred bidder for Melbourne’s first Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) East main works contract is Suburban Connect, a consortium of CPB Contractors, Ghella and Acciona Construction. Contract award is expected by the end of the year. The works include the construction


of 16km of twin rail tunnels between Cheltenham and Glen Waverley, which will be state’s longest tunnels. The TBMs are scheduled to be launched in 2026. A second contract is to be awarded


in 2024 for the tunnels between Glen Waverley and Box Hill. Up to 10 TBMs are to be used to


construct the full 26km of twin tunnels for SRL East, with TBMs launching from Monash, Burwood and Heatherton. The new line will be open to passengers by 2035. Early construction works for SRL East


are under way in Box Hill, Burwood and Heatherton, with works starting soon in Monash and returning to Glen Waverley and Clayton later this year.


Robo-checks to spot conditions in power tunnels UK – A robotic ‘dog’, about the size of a Labrador, is being used by UK Power Networks to inspect its cable tunnel network in London, and east and south- east England. Its camera and thermal imaging record data to compare with existing information by using machine learning. Initial results revealed the robot could


cut maintenance inspection times, by half. The robot was supplied by US firm Boston Dynamics and the project has been supported by Arup, whose new web platform includes the machine learning interface. There are 47 tunnels across UK Power


Networks’ operating areas and each year more than 160 tunnel inspections are carried out, costing over £1m.


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