Tunneling at CSM
The second annual “Breakthroughs in Tunneling” short course was held Sept. 23-25 at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo. This course undoubtedly is the most comprehensive such tunneling course in the world. In fact, of the more than 120 attendees, there were students from Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Taiwan and Korea.
Principal course directors were Levent Ozdemir, Professor emeritus, CSM, and Tim Coss, president of Microtunneling Inc. The cadre of speakers included many of the tunneling leaders from across North America, notably, Greg Raines, MWH; Randy Essex, Hatch Mott McDonald; Bob Goodfellow, Black & Veatch; Gary Brierley, Brierley Associates; Bill Hansmire, Parsons Brinkerhoff; Glenn Boyce, Jacobs Associates; Dennis O’Fiara, Robbins; Jack Raymer, Jordan Jones & Goulding; Ray Henn, Lyman-Henn; and Jack Brockway, Herrenknecht. Thursday evening featured a banquet for all attendees. The guest speaker was Jeff Petersen, Kiewit.
Representative topics included: “Selection of Excavation Method,” “Shaft Design and Construction,” “Predicting Groundwater Inflows,” Guidance and Monitoring of Tunnel Machines” and “Probe Drilling and Pre-excavation Grouting.”
The course was sponsored by Brierley Associates with supporting sponsorships from Ruen Drilling, Atlas Copco Construction Mining Technique, MWH Global, Shotcrete Technologies and The Center for Environmental Diplomacy. Principal organizers of the course were CSM, Microtunneling Inc., and TBM: Tunnel Business Magazine, sister publication to Trenchless Technology.
The first tunneling short course was held in 2008. Now with another successful course in 2009, Ozdemir announced this will be an annual event at CSM. The 2010 Breakthroughs in Tunneling course will be held Sept. 22-24.
