Going underground

For Switzerland, the Gotthard is more than a mountain. It is a legend and a key gateway to the south. When the tunnel boring machine began work on the Gotthard in August this year, the construction of the tunnel between Airolo and Göschenen was in the public eye and the focus of media attention once again. Much of this attention centred on Implenia, which is building the tunnel with the “secondo tubo” joint venture. Yet the second Gotthard tube is just one of four large-scale European transalpine routes currently being built with Implenia’s involvement. 
That makes Implenia the only construction service provider to be involved in all the major transalpine routes at the same time: the expansion of the Gotthard road tunnel, the Brenner base tunnel between Austria and Italy, the Mont Cenis base tunnel for the new highspeed rail link between Lyon and Turin, and the Semmering base tunnel between Lower Austria and the Steiermark region as part of the new southern section of the Baltic-Adriatic corridor.  

Price is not everything 

How does Implenia manage to gain the contract for major tunnel construction projects again and again? “A key factor is our enormous experience from previous projects, which we are able to contribute to new projects,” says Erwin Scherer, Global Head Tunnelling Implenia. “This allows us to use our expertise to simulate new projects, to plan them in a thorough and structured way, and, if the client permits or wants this, to respond to open points in our bid.”  

Implenia also benefits from the fact that price is no longer the only factor in decisions on bids. Christian Späth, Head of the Division Civil Engineering: “More and more clients are making decisions based on a comprehensive assessment matrix that takes into account not only the price, but also a host of quality criteria such as stability in construction execution, i.e. the schedule.” Implenia’s experience of implementing large, complex infrastructure projects is a major advantage here. “We can demonstrate references, including international ones.” These show that Implenia is well versed in dealing with different local, formal and cultural requirements. After all, implementing tunnel constructions takes more than just engineering and technology.  

Diving deep under the city 

It is not just in the Alps, but also in cities, that Division Civil Engineering is building a range of beacon projects – for example at Marienhof in Munich and in Berlin, where a tunnel stretching around 6.7 kilometres is being constructed for a new 380-kV power line – part of the expansion of the cable network that will secure the supply of renewable energy to the city. Projects like this demand close cooperation and interdisciplinary expertise on the part of Business Units Civil Engineering, Special Foundations and Tunnelling. And they are pioneering.

Going underground 

According to the authors of our white paper “Tunnelling & Underground Space 2050” (see infobox), uses of underground space are developing into a key construction topic of the future. One of the central challenges of our time lies in finding underground alternatives to compensate for lack of space on the surface. Even today, underground space is increasingly being used for roads and rail, for energy, telecommunications and data, for sewerage systems and for extracting resources.

In Paris, for example, the visionary project “Forum des Halles” created a station including a shopping centre that would never have been possible above ground, either in terms of dimensions or usage.  And in future, underground connections and spaces could be used for purposes that today still appear unusual, such as warehouses, production facilities, logistics networks or underground recreation and entertainment facilities. 

The company’s good reputation and its beacon projects both help to draw in young employees despite the shortage of specialist staff, says the Global Head Tunnelling. “Complex, largescale projects are attractive” – even if they are often not exactly on the doorstep and demand that employees adapt their lifestyles. “But it is beacon projects like this that enable young people to take on a lot of responsibility relatively quickly.” And it is with this kind of beacon project that Division Civil Engineering hopes to build the infrastructure of tomorrow – as it positions itself as a reliable partner for challenging, hybrid infrastructure projects with more than 100 years of experience.