The UK tunnelling industry – and it is certainly not alone in this – sees severe peaks and troughs. A good example is the long break between the end of the Tyne & Wear Metro, the Fleet Line, the Second Dartford Crossing and the Liverpool Link/Loop in the late 1970s and the start of the Mersey Sewers, the Channel Tunnel and the Thames Water Ring Main in the late 1980s.
The lag between workloads is incredibly damaging to the industry. Companies cannot retain skills if they don’t have a project to bill them to. Tunnelling experts have to look to other engineering sectors or look to overseas projects – in this case there was a stopgap in the Hong Kong metro.
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But surely there is a better way?
When Joseph Bazalgette was building London’s sewers in the late 19th Century he was part of a Metropolitan Board of Works. The Board was the principal instrument of London-wide government from 1855 to 1889. Its principal responsibility was to provide infrastructure to cope with London’s rapid growth. This made it a single client for all London infrastructure projects and therefore arguably able to manage resources much more efficiently than the system we have now where multiple clients effectively bid against each other for the best team and lowest price.
A return to state built infrastructure is probably a dream. But perhaps there is scope for a system that brings the benefits of a single client to the system we currently suffer under.
Could the BTS develop a Tunnelling Board of Clients, which shares details on project demands and scheduling? And could the International Tunnelling Association (ITA) take it a step further and create an International Board of Clients made up of the chairman of each regional Client Board to better schedule works.
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By GlobalDataThe benefits of a well-established system of cooperation would surely have a positive impact on the entire industry. The skills shortages that threaten so many projects would be eased.
More construction companies will get involved in tunnelling if they can see there is a steady and reliable flow of work. And ultimately, could the cost of tunnelling be reduced making it compete better with alternatives?
Perhaps this is something for the new BTS chairman and the new ITA presidents to take up.
Jon Young
