There’s been a couple of bits of much needed good news for the UK market this month. Firstly we see that the UK government has finally given the Hindhead Tunnel A3 improvement scheme the go ahead. After what seems an age of “will they, won’t they”, our procrastinating transport department has decided that we really do need this project after all.

Well thank the lord for that. It seems ironic that quite some noise was made back in 2002 about the early contractor involvement ‘ECI’ contract awarded to Balfour Beatty for the construction of the 1.9km long tunnel. This was specifically developed to smooth project delivery by getting the project’s major players together as soon as possible. And then what do we do? Take 4 years to figure out if we can actually afford it, whilst the construction team waits for the green light! In defence, there have been cost escalations for a variety of reasons, but when will be able to make a decision and build such schemes? You just have to look at a project like the Madrid Metro to see what can be done when everybody pulls in the same direction.

And so onto good news part 2, the UK Environment Minister’s apparent support for the US$3bn Thames Tideway Tunnel, under the River Thames in London. Although unlikely to be the 34km long, 7.2m diameter tunnel we’d hope for, and more likely a stripped down version, it could still be a major project worth up to US$1bn with significant tunnelling. The reason the tunnel is so needed is the worsening quality of the water in the River Thames. Hastened by the up coming Olympics in 2012, its been decided that something has to be done about the foul water regularly spilling into the Thames. Also, the European Union can impose significant fines on the UK if the problem is not addressed. It is believed that no real planning obstacles would hold up realisation of the scheme, and the final design and TBM procurement would take about a year, so all in all it’s looking good.

Again there is something of an irony here. If Crossrail gets the go-ahead next year, could we be in a position where London is booming with tunnelling works? It would have been extremely useful to have had this on the tail of CTRL a couple of years ago, with eight 8m diameter TBMs sitting in London and a raft of experienced tunnelling engineers at our disposal.

But then that would have taken foresight, not something our government seems to ExCel at here.

Tris Thomas