Tunnels, bridges and towers

Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 2:51 pm · 5 min read

Jeddah Tower passes 470 m on its way to over 1,000 m

The Saudi supertall has about 118 floors built and targets completion in late 2028, when it should overtake the 828 m Burj Khalifa.

For you: Building to a kilometre pushes concrete pumping, wind engineering, foundation design and construction logistics to their limits, and the methods trickle down to ordinary high-rise work. Many Nepali civil engineers work in Gulf construction, so projects like this are a real employer. Students interested in tall buildings can start with structural analysis, wind and earthquake loads, and high-strength concrete in their BCE courses.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 2:45 pm · 5 min read

TBM Caroline finishes 2.2 km power tunnel under the Thames early

National Grid's new 400 kV cable tunnel between Tilbury and Gravesend broke through on 27 September, 49 days ahead of schedule.

For you: Segmental tunnel lining, slurry TBMs and shaft construction are the same techniques used in hydropower headrace tunnels and in underground works planned around Kathmandu. A short cable tunnel like this also shows that tunnelling is not only for roads and railways, because power utilities need it too. BCE students who study soil and rock mechanics, concrete design and construction planning will meet every one of these steps, from shaft sinking to ring building, in their courses.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 2:39 pm · 5 min read

HS2 finishes central section of 1.4 km Wendover green tunnel

EKFB placed the last of the central section's precast segments on 5 October for the cut-and-cover tunnel that will be buried under landscaped earth.

For you: Not every tunnel needs a boring machine. A green tunnel is a cheaper, shallow alternative that limits noise and lets farmland or forest return on top, an approach that could suit Nepal's expressways through towns and protected areas. Precast segments made in a factory and lifted into place also show how off-site construction improves speed and quality, which links to reinforced concrete design and construction planning in BCE.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 2:21 pm · 5 min read

World Bank lends $110 million to rebuild Sri Lanka roads after cyclone

The money repairs 600 km of roads hit by Cyclone Ditwah, rebuilt with better drainage and landslide protection.

For you: Nepal's hill roads fail for the same reasons: poor drainage, cut-slope failures and undersized culverts. Lenders now attach resilience standards to reconstruction money, so engineers who can design side drains, retaining structures and slope protection, and justify them in a cost estimate, are in demand on donor-funded projects. Highway engineering and hydrology courses in BCE are where those skills start.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 2:09 pm · 5 min read

Fehmarnbelt immersed tunnel nears its first kilometre

A fourth 217 m, 73,500-tonne element was sunk into place, bringing about 900 m of the 18 km Denmark-Germany tunnel into position.

For you: An immersed tunnel is a different idea from a bored one: the structure is built as large precast concrete boxes in a dry dock and then floated and sunk into place. It brings together precast concrete design, buoyancy and marine construction, and it shows how factory production can control quality on a huge structure. Students in BCE meet the underlying principles in hydraulics, reinforced concrete design and construction management.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 1:57 pm · 5 min read

Gujarat opens new Gambhira bridge a year after deadly collapse

The replacement two-lane bridge over the Mahi river, with 23 spans and epoxy-coated steel, was built in about a year.

For you: The collapse and the rebuild together are a lesson in bridge life cycle: design, inspection, maintenance and replacement. Nepal also has many bridges from the 1980s carrying far more traffic than they were built for. Corrosion protection, load rating and routine inspection are less visible than new construction, but they decide whether a bridge stays safe. These topics sit in BCE courses on bridge engineering and concrete durability.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 1:51 pm · 5 min read

Bangladesh approves mostly underground Dhaka metro Line 5 South

The 17.2 km Gabtoli-Dasherkandi line, about 13 km underground, was approved at Tk 45,504 crore with ADB and Korean loans.

For you: Dhaka is building underground metro in soft, waterlogged delta soil, a hard geotechnical problem that Kathmandu's lake-bed clays also pose. Cut-and-cover stations, TBM tunnels under dense cities and dewatering are skills in short supply across South Asia. The doubling of costs on the earlier lines is also a lesson in estimating and risk, which are part of construction management in BCE.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 1:45 pm · 5 min read

Himalayan rail line breaks through 10.8 km escape tunnel

RVNL connected the second-longest tunnel on the Rishikesh-Karnaprayag line on 11 September, through faulted rock near the Main Boundary Thrust.

For you: This line crosses the same Himalayan fault zones that run through Nepal, so its problems with squeezing, fractured rock are directly relevant to Nepali hydropower and road tunnels. Escape tunnels, NATM support design and rock mass classification are taught in BCE courses and used on every major Nepali tunnel. The repeated schedule slips also show how ground uncertainty changes cost and time, which is part of an engineer's job to estimate.

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