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A massive construction project has been underway deep in the heart of the Schnecktal valley area in Germany. From the surface, though, you would never be able to tell. The majority of the work is underground, as a joint-venture team led by German contractor Wayss and Freytag Ingenieurbau builds the nearly 7km long Finne Tunnel. After a few years of tunnel boring operations, the contractor is at work finishing the interior of the tunnel, slipforming first the tunnel’s floor and then a walkway with its GOMACO

New technologies are coming to market with regard to driving and supporting tunnels, with drilling and blasting and accompanying shotcreating technologies being widely used worldwide. Drilling and blasting can be a cost-effective method in the right conditions and in this segment Atlas Copco and Sandvik hold major market shares worldwide, although other firms such as Furukawa and Montabert also compete. Shotcreting equipment is widely used following after drilling and blasting, with CIFA broadening its rang

Infrastructure investment means that the road tunnel construction sector is healthy due to demand for new links – Mike Woof reports With many emergent nations investing heavily in infrastructure, the tunnelling sector is seeing extensive business at present. Tunnels provide key links in mountainous areas or in congested cities where building roads on the surface may not be practical. In Asia and Latin America, many key road connections are now being built underground to pass challenging terrain or provide

Asphalt plants were recently delivered for use in the biggest road construction project in Latin America. Meanwhile, a US navy base has just received a plant Guy Woodford reports Spanning around 1,000km, the Ruta del Sol highway in Colombia is the largest road build works currently taking place in Latin America. Brazilian company Odebrecht, part of the Ruta del Sol Concessionaire group working on sector 2 of the highway stretching 528km from Puerto Salgar to San Roque, connecting the capital Bogota to the

Sateco says its new detensioning spacer unit being showcased at this month Intermat 2012 event in Paris is a world first for the construction industry. The product is fitted with a side nut that acts as a valve, releasing the force acting on the formwork rod after concrete has dried. When the side nut is manoeuvred, the detensioning spacer unit is moved, thus releasing the pressure acting on the main nut. The main nut is then easier to unscrew, allowing faster and less strenuous form removal. Product design

RMD Kwikform has supplied its 80kN Rapidshor shoring for the widening of the Tolo Highway, running between the Island House Interchange and Tai Hang in Hong Kong. The project, overseen by main contractor Gammon Construction and set to be completed by the end of 2013, will widen the Tolo Highway from a two to four-lane carriageway in each direction, alleviating traffic congestion. “We were approached by [project] sub-contractors, United Soundfair and Richwell Engineering to supply shoring and formwork suppor

Rapid urban growth is resulting in massive mega cities with major transport needs and Mexico City is one of the world’s largest – Mike Woof reports Mexico City is a vast, sprawling metropolis and one of the world’s largest cities, resulting in huge problems for its inhabitants, particularly with regard to infrastructure. Measuring population size is an inexact science for large cities as suburban areas can add to the figures considerably, especially in developing nations where unplanned expansion is as comm

New and highly regarded existing formwork systems have been used in major recent transport-related construction projects across the globe. Guy Woodford looks at some of their applications The multi-million dollar Mississippi River Bridge project in the United State is creating a vital new gateway between Illinois and Missouri. Central to the project is the realignment and reconstruction of Interstate 70 and a new landmark bridge, featuring two pylons projecting vertically from the Mississippi river bed w

Australia's increasingly popular 12D Model software package for road design, terrain modelling, surveying and drainage has been selected as the main design and survey tool for the coordinated earthquake rebuild of Christchurch in New Zealand The 12D Model software will be the common platform for a group of consultants and contractors making up the recently formed SCIRT, standing for "Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team". They will use it for survey, repair and rebuild of both the road netwo

Transport and traffic analysis nowadays tends to switch between static analysis modelling for large scale studies and microsimulation for finer grain work, with perhaps the mesoscopic model also finding a place for mid-level. Most producers make software tools at all three levels and increasingly package them together. Spanish firm TSS (Transport Simulation Systems) has gone one better with its latest release Aimsum 7, by giving it the capacity to "zoom in" from a larger scale mesoscopic model to a smaller