The group says the aim is to generate as much interest as possible before formalising things. However, there is a core organisational group consisting of: Alena Conrads, Annika Jodehl, Ivan Popovic, Zdenek Zizka, Markus Scheffer, Peter Hoffmann, Sascha Freimann and Vojtech Gall.

The organisation is integrated into Stuva, but it does also have strong ties with Daub. A spokesperson for the group praised the German tunnelling industry for being particularly close-knit, but when asked about the history of Stuva YEP’s creation, added: “For a group like this to develop, there has to be a certain critical mass of younger individuals that know each other and work together to get something started. All of us in the organizational team are currently finishing up our PhDs at the Ruhr University in Bochum Germany under the funding of Collaborative Research Centre 837 ‘interaction modelling in mechanized tunnelling’ and because of that, we've had the opportunity over the past couple of years to get something like this started.

“We heard about ITAYM for the first time at the WTC in Croatia in 2015, and have been mulling over doing something similar for Germany since. Last year we contacted Roland Leucker and got his support to go forward with our plan, and that’s how we decided that the STUVA conference in December was the best place to start.”

The group lists its objectives as:

Build a network of young tunneling professionals by:

Organizing and participating in regularly planned workshops, site visits, and social events

Increasing the attractiveness of underground engineering among students and future career starters

Developing the personal and professional contacts that will form the foundation for a successful career

Facilitate the exchange of knowledge between research and practice by:

Designing events in which young engineering professionals can present their own ideas about the state of new and developing topics in tunnelling

Creating a network for the exchange of ideas between research and practice

Providing information about the most important decisions and changes being made in established organizations and associations that are affecting the industry today

Represent German Tunneling internationally by:

Contacting, associating with, and integrating our members in other important national and international organizations in tunneling and other related fields

Expanding our national to an international professional network by organizing and arranging international meetings of young engineers with similar organizations worldwide

Regarding the group’s immediate future or a headquarters city, the spokesman said: “At this point we don’t have a central location. We try to plan our meetings around where there is interesting research or construction going on. Tunnel Construction in Germany is definitely not centralized – right now we have the Stuttgart 21 project in south-west germany, we just completed the 50km long emscher sewage tunnel in the ruhr-area, and, because of the mountains, there’s always something going on in southern germany along the alps, so it wouldn’t make sense for us a group to be centralized either. We also want to give everyone interested in Germany a chance to be at at least one meeting per year.

“On April 13, 2018 we will be hosting a meeting/workshop at the Ruhr-University on ‘Digitalisation in the Tunneling Industry’. It will mostly be BIM focused and we have young engineers from all parts of the industry: contractors, owners, designers, and researchers, presenting their experience with BIM. We want to make sure that this group becomes an open platform for in-depth discussions where we young engineers don’t have to be afraid to say something wrong. Of course, because we are a German group, we will probably ‘prost’ with beer afterwards.”