An internal audit of Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) has found a catalogue of management faults linked to construction of the Hanekleiv tunnel, which suffered a partial roof collapse in the southbound tube last year. The collapse required emergency strengthening works and forced nationwide safety checks.

T&TI was told that the four key findings of the internal audit were: unclear responsibility lines; lack of communication; lack of use of documentation; and, personal mistakes.

Prior to the Hanekleiv project the NPRA undertook tunnelling work with a unified construction division. However, in the 1990s the agency split the unit as work started on E18 south west of Oslo, which involved construction of seven twin-bore tunnels (14 tubes, in total), including Hanekleiv.

The division was split into a project management unit and a building unit. While the project management unit supervised private sector contractors on most of the tunnels – 11 out of 14 – both it and its sister building unit were required to work together on three of the tunnels (two tubes at Hanekleiv, and one of the two tubes at Loken), though under the new organisational arrangement.

But NPRA’s audit has found that the new organisational structure was not enforced on the projects by top management and nor was its implementation adequately monitored. This lack of oversight, as well as limited support for the units, complicated the professional relationships on the jobs – which were further troubled by insufficient back-up given to the building unit by the overstretched project management unit.

In addition, the audit found that the building unit was dealing with some geology not recognised as sufficiently different by geologists and engineers used to hard rock excavation in west Norway.

The technical findings on the partial roof collapse was released by the state Department of Transport (SD) earlier this year, and blamed a combination of swelling clays and insufficient structural lining at the location of the failure as the technical reasons for the failure (T&TI, March p14). SD has launched another audit, into top management at NPRA.


An audit by NPRA found management failures after the collapse