I read these sentences in New Civil Engineer and I just hope they don't mean by this lowering the salaries. Everytime I hear such a new, the employees take the heat

"Tunnelling industry warned that it must increase productivity to reduce costs
"The tunnelling industry is failing to increase its productivity, former British Tunnelling Society (BTS) chairman Bill Grose has said.
"lack of productivity was preventing the industry from flourishing"
"the industry has stalled for the last 10 or 20 years".

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/tunnelling-industry-warned-that-it-must-increase-productivity-to-reduce-costs-19-12-2019/

I think the guy has a point. What was the last time you heard any real innovation in mechanized tunneling for example? We are stuck with these 60s, 70s, technologies with minor tweaks.

This is really another wake-up call for the dominating companies in tunneling industry. If they do not innovate, the disruptors will oust them soon or later.

It is unfair to interpret BTS Chairman Bill Grose's words in any way other than what they are intended for. There is some sort of happy-trooper mentality in the past 2 decades in tunneling world. Hardly anything new comes. It has become a repeat business.

This is a very fitting summary of Tunnel Boring Machines anno 2020:

" tunnel boring machines are a key source of expense, a single point of failure, economically unsalable after a single use, and need to come out the other end of tunnels as they don’t back up. They have the advantages of relatively continuous tunneling and automation, but still represent an unreasonably high portion of the cost and appeared too slow."

We need someone like Elon Musk to relieve us from the complacency of today's tunnel boring machine producers.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/30/psh-fast-pt-2-oscillating-disk-cutters-for-tunneling-could-reduce-time-cost/

#tunneling #tunnels