It was another year of ups and downs for the tunnelling industry, a situation we must surely all be getting used to by now. Whilst the world recession, which started pretty much in mid 2008, is now in full swing, the heavy civil engineering fraternity appears to be coming away reasonably unscathed. Certainly by comparison to, say, the housebuilding industry, and positively glowing when compared to the retail industries.
The UK’s tunneller’s will be happy with the upcoming Crossrail, Tideway and raft of cable tunnels, not to mention London Underground’s planned refurbishment works. In the US, huge resources are being plowed into infrastructure, not least hopefully for California’s High Speed Rail Network (see T&TNA comment) and the deluge of works on the cards for New York. Australia promises to be a hot spot for large scale tunnelling projects for the next five to ten years, whilst China rumbles on as the leading tunnel builder in the world in terms of kms planned or being built. Singapore will once again rise as a place to be, with plans to relocate all infrastructure underground, and India, the once silent achiever now genuinely threatens China in terms of tunnels planned.
There are plenty more examples of where the works will be picking up, but space limits us, and this needn’t just be a list talking up possible future opportunities. If projects are the industry’s payoff, then certain “issues” within the discipline can be seen as our own personal nemesis. We’ve banged on about this on many occasions, but here are just a couple of areas that at the very least need a bit of attention, if not a radical re-think.
As an industry we must get back to the old days of the entrepreneurs who took their ideas and solutions to the decision makers and actually created their own destiny. Problems were solved before they were even known and finances were drummed up by the personal barracking of those who stood to benefit from the construction. This is how the civil engineers of the Victorian era earned their reputation as movers and shakers, a true celebrity of the time who made a real impact on peoples quality of life, as opposed to today’s lame Big Brother contestant misfits desperate for their 15 minutes of fame with nothing to offer the world but fake tans and breast implants.
Next we need to make the industry more attractive to the young. By becoming an actionary rather than reactionary industry, as displayed by the Victorians, we can hope to draw in the dynamic brains of the next generation, but mark my words, if they are not paid what they deserve, or given reasonable work/life balance they will go elsewhere. There are many more areas where we need to improve as an industry both technically and holistically, as you will know, being at the work face so to speak. It may be a good idea to spend some time putting our own house in order if we are to truly benefit from future opportunities in 2009 and beyond.
Tris Thomas
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalData
Tris Thomas
