Author: Novoconsult Ltd.

The informed client in underground construction

Procurement practice is built around the assumption that the client understands what they are buying. In most infrastructure sectors that assumption is reasonable. In underground construction, the gap between procurement complexity and client experience may be wider than in most other sectors — and experience is that the consequences of that gap can be unforgiving.

Underground infrastructure is frequently undervalued in business cases. Tunnelling carries visible upfront risk and cost. The long-term benefits — capacity, reduced surface disruption, and structural durability under conditions that damage surface infrastructure — are harder to quantify and easy to discount. The post-earthquake record is instructive: underground structures generally outperform surface infrastructure in seismic events, though the margin depends on depth, ground conditions, and structural form — bored tunnels in rock behave differently from shallow cut-and-cover boxes in soft ground.

The ITA/IMIA Tunnelling Code of Practice had its origins in a crisis. A series of significant failures in the 1990s — most notably the collapse of the Heathrow Express tunnels in 1994 — placed the viability of tunnelling insurance in serious doubt. The frequency of claims prompted the Association of British Insurers to warn the industry that without a significant reduction in losses, capacity would be withdrawn. The Code was the industry’s collective response: a framework designed to make failure extremely remote. Three revisions later, the Code remains highly relevant — not because it has failed, but because the failures it was designed to prevent continue to occur, often with the same or very similar causes.