The ITACET Foundation started its third year of existence under  very good conditions.

The “starting period” is now over; during these two years we succeeded to organize 12 events attended by almost 1000 participants as you can read in the website welcome page. The Foundation has now 26 Founders and Donors and can count on more than 80 lecturers provided by the ITA-CET Committee, both from academic and industry world.

After the recent Seminars in Shanghai (Safety under Operation), in Kathmandu (Sprayed Concrete) and in Phnom Penh (General approach on underground works), the Foundation’s programme for this third year, by June 2012, includes not less than  8 events in India (Health and safety), in Saudi Arabia (Safety under Operation), in Brazil, Chile and Argentina (Sprayed Concrete), in Mexico (general Tunnelling), in China (Mechanized Tunnelling) and of course in Thailand at the occasion of the WTC2012 (Tunnelling in Urban areas); some other actions are under preparation but not fully decided up to now.

I hope to meet all of you in Riyadh on 25-26 March 2012 for the Seminar for Continuing Education on Safety under Operation; you will have the possibility to listen and to talk with the major experts in the field; we expected to gather  not only the experts from ITA but also those from IRF (Road Federation), PIARC (Road Association) and UIC (Railways Union).

I wish you a very Healthy, Happy and Successful year 2012

ITACET Foundation’s President
Eng. Abdullah Al-Mogbel

SPRAYED CONCRETE IN CONVENTIONAL TUNNELLING

- Training Course WTC 2011 Helsinki

ITA-AITES and the ITACET Foundation, together with the Finnish Tunnelling Association and four ITA sponsors, BASF-Meyco, Mapei-UTT, Normet and VSH Hagerbach Test Gallery Ltd., organized just before the WTC 2011 World Tunnel Congress in Helsinki a very fruitful two days training session for young professionals on ”Conventional Rock Tunnelling and Sprayed Concrete Technology”.

The course was intended to give the participants a holistic approach for use of wet sprayed concrete in rock support and permanent lining for rapid conventional tunnelling and underground construction. It concentrated on the basic practical aspects of the whole sprayed concrete process chain in daily production, especially on issues important for young engineers to understand and to have control over their daily work on site or in design companies.

The course was built up around Scandinavian practice of use of sprayed concrete. It as well included methods, techniques and trends in drilling, blasting, injection and waterproofing - all important parameters to successful use and good final quality of sprayed concrete as rock support and lining. The topics of qualification, training and certification of sprayed concrete supervisors and operators were, too, dealt in the course.

In the second day there was as well demonstrations in Lemminkäinen Construction Ltd tunnelling site just below the Congress area on EFNARC best spraying practices, sprayed concrete quality controls, sprayable membranes and fibre reinforced sprayed concrete to give the young engineers a feeling for important parameters to be checked and controlled in the sprayed concrete process.

The course gathered altogether more than 50 participants from 20 different countries, and the participants were extremely interested and satified with the course given by 20 high-level specialists from all arond the world. Especially the practical demonstrations gained high interest. Seeing is believing and probably the best way to understand the process of spraying concrete!

Prof. Pekka Särkkä

WTC 2011 SC Chairman

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for a Happy New Year!

The secretariat of the Foundation.
Claude Bérenguier, Alexandre Pilloud, Jeannette Schaerli-Smeets

The Foundation together with the Ministry of Transport (MOT) of Saudi Arabia is preparing a two days seminar to be held in Riyadh on 25-26 March 2012.  This Seminar on the theme of "Safety Operation In Railway and Road Tunnels" as for objectives to to provide an introduction to the safe use and operation of railway and road tunnel systems.

The main topics will be: 

    Research and Development
    Specific Aspects of Safety of Railway Systems
    Specific Aspects of Safety of Road Tunnels
    Fire control

More information about the course will be made available on the Foundation web site.

The Foundation together with the Tunnelling Association of India is preparing for February 2012 a two-day Training Session on Health and Safety in New Delhi, India. 

MM. Donald Lamont and Martin Vogel (respectively animateur and vice animateur of ITA-AITES working group on Health and safety) will lectures on four topics under the main theme "Health and safety"

• General overview
• Hazards and risks associated with different construction methods
• Safety in tunnelling construction
• Health in tunnel construction

More information about the course will be made available on the Foundation web site.

The Seminar for Continuing Education on Safety Operation in Metro and Road Tunnels was organized in Shanghai on 12-13 November 2011by TONGJI University, Shanghai Society for Civil Engineering (SSCE) and the ITACET Foundation.

The objective was to provide a general overview to the safe use and operation of metro and road tunnel systems followed by more in-depth sessions on operation (management structure and organization for emergency situations), monitoring technology, fire control (detection, passive and active fire fighting and mitigation) and research (recent research about safety in operation).

The seminar was attended by more than 100 participants coming from Clients, Universities, Designers, Consultants and Operators.

The training session went well. The total number of participants was 120 including 5 guest speakers and 9 Norton university staff and management. In general, our participants were satisfied with the course especially those who have knowledge related to Geotechnical Engineering.

 Download the program of the training session >>

Launching of the Master in "Tunnels and Underground Structures: from design to operation"

On Monday, October 3rd, 2011, thirteen students in the first semester of the specialized Master   in TOS  are integrated into this new training in Lyon. This program has been launched at the initiative of the AFTES  for a cycle of five month of course and projects and a five month internship within a professional environment. The Master is ITA-AITES endorsed and granted by the ITACET Foundation.

At the 21 of November 2011 was started the MASTER POST LAUREA: “TUNNEL AND TUNNEL BORING MACHINES” – 8th edition

The need of experts involved in TBM tunnelling as well as work site management is rapidly increasing throughout the world.

The requested qualification to cover these roles cannot be supplied by the first and second level of usual University programmes (Bachelor and MSc) but it appears that a special draw up course is needed.