BBT-SE Europe Construction Jan14 Bro

BBT-SE Fast track below the Alps

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2 | BE Monthly

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Fast track below the Alps The Brenner Base Tunnel is one of those infrastructure projects that has an historical as well as an engineering dimension – symbolizing cross border collaboration as much as a free market in Europe

written by: John O’Hanlon research by: Abi Abagun

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he Alps are Europe’s great natural boundary, cutting Italy off from the rest of the continent. Getting from one side to the other whether for purposes of travel, war or trade has been a headache ever since ‘the iceman’ Ötzi lost his life 5,000 years ago on the Fineilspitze, not 20 miles to the east of the Brenner pass.

The Brenner was not used for regular traffic until the second century AD and remained a very minor crossing right up to the late 18th century when Maria Theresa caused a road to be built. It is however the lowest of the six major Alpine passes, which is why it was chosen as the route for the Brenner Railway from Innsbruck in Austria to Bolzano and Verona in Italy. However the railway still has to climb to fairly dizzying heights, reaching 1,371 metres at its highest point, on the border between Italy and Austria and overcoming the gradient by means of two spiral tunnels.

That means it is a slow route, exacerbated by the need to change engines.

Goods traffic between northern and southern Europe is constantly increasing and it is the goal for much of this traffic to be transferred from road to rail to protect the sensitive Alpine environment, which is a global heritage. The case for creating a ‘flat’ rail link, along which more of this freight can travel became compelling as long ago as 1971 when the International Union of Railways (UIC) commissioned a study for a new Brenner railway with a ‘base tunnel’ – a term which is a direct translation of the German ‘Basistunnel.’ By 1989 three feasibility studies had been drawn up which formed the basis

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Südtirol • Alto Adige

Brennercom A fiber-optic network straddling the Alps: Brennercom brings high-speed data to BBT

the most dynamic in the European economy.

Thanks to this transmission “backbone”, the offices and construction site of the BBT can “Lighting up” the work in the Brenner Basis use a fiber-optic access network (FTTH) Tunnel (BBT) is a fiber-optic data network, with a speed of 100 Mbit/s or a radio link at provided by Brennercom that allows 30 Mbit/s, achieved with MPLS technology, communications between the south side and which optimises the flow of administrative and the north side along the route between Bolzano technical information. and Innsbruck, where the offices of BBT are Brennercom has been present in the regional (voice connection is also provided in Bolzano) market since 1998 and is now increasing and between the two tunnel portals of Fortezza the range of services it offers to a wider / Franzensfeste and the intermediate one of geographical area. Optical networks, DSL Stafflach - Wolf. The operator of reference or, in areas with more difficult accessibility, for the enterprise market in Trentino - Alto radio links allow broadband services and the Adige as well as the Cloud Service Provider, necessary data infrastructure to be given to Brennercom has its head offices in Bolzano a large customer base, which numbers over and other offices in Trento, Verona, Milan, as 7,000 companies and government agencies, well as subsidiaries in Austria (Innsbruck) and providing, amongst other things, several Germany (Munich): all “nodes” in a high-speed business parks. fiber-optic transmission network that connects Top-level communication networks and IT a large transnational area which is one of services find a new synergy in Brennercom.

The three new-generation data centres in Bolzano, Trento and Innsbruck, connected by one of the fastest transmission networks in the whole of Europe, are at the base of the innovative range of solutions based on the cloud computing model. Company clients can thus access data processing and storage as well as connectivity resources in a flexible and “tailored” way, with the additional guarantee of having information totally protected, thanks to top-level technology platforms, partnerships with the most authoritative international brands, international certifications and support by qualified personnel.

Dr. Karl Manfredi, CEO

www.brennercom.it

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for further planning of the Brenner Base under construction or actually operational.

Tunnel, however it wasn’t until 2004 that The only way to create a high-speed line BBT-SE, the Austro-Italian company that is across the Alps was to tunnel below them: building the tunnel, was formed. the maximum elevation above sea level is just The BBT is much more than just a tunnel 794 metres and the steepest incline just 6.7 through a mountain. The ₏8.5 billion degrees. The BBT is 55 kilometres long from Fortezza in Italy to Innsbruck project, funded by the EU and the Austrian and Italian North, however if you add it governments, is the main to an existing section built element of the new Brenner in 1994 that bypasses the railway from Munich to city emerging at Tulfes, Verona. It is a key link in the the tunnel is 64 kilometres priority EU project to create a in length, making it the 2,200-kilometre railway axis longest underground railway between Berlin in Germany connection in the world.

Cubic feet of soil and Palermo in Sicily. Three Professor Konrad extracted quarters of this axis is already Bergmeister was appointed

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RENAISSANCE Construction - INFRASTRUKTUR: Untertagebau | Kraftwerksbau | Bahnbau

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RENAISSANCE CONSTRUCTION

The RENAISSANCE Group was founded in 1993 in St. Petersburg and has delivered more than 430 turnkey projects with more than seven million square feet of enclosed space and is one of the leading construction companies in Europe. The current order backlog exceeds five billion dollars with a workforce of over 30’000 employees in eleven countries.

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is the infrastructure sector (mining, railway construction).

The RENAISSANCE Construction GmbH Hergiswil with about 130 employees, has been instrumental participating since 2001 in the construction of the longest railway tunnel in the world – the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland, and since 2008 also the railway equipment of this century project is running significantly.This provides the basis for the development in the area of infrastructure.

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of the other two. Connecting tunnels link the main tubes ever 330 metres, providing a high level of accessibility-and security.

The exploration tunnel will be valuable as a drainage and service asset (it lies twelve metres below the main tunnels) once the other two have been built using a combination of blasting and tunnel boring, depending on circumstances, though 70 percent will be excavated using TBMs. The main reason for driving a pilot tunnel was a geological one, Bergmeister explains. “Though we know a lot about the geology of the Alps, it was impossible to know exactly what rock conditions we would encounter. The tunnel has to cross something called the periadriatic fault, or seam: we know it is there but at that depth we don’t know exactly how it behaves.�

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“We have turned to the most innovative technologies and materials in designing this tunnel for a lifetime of more than 200 years!”

The exploratory tunnel is important to obtain further information about the inside of the mountain and therefore plan the construction of the main tubes with a higher degree of precision, he emphasises. “Such geological information as we started with was based on preliminary studies that have been going on for decades. More than 34 kilometres of drilling was done, in which over 27,000 cubic metres of stone were removed

from the mountain, to evaluate the rock mass along the planned tunnel route.”

During construction the spoil from the main tunnels will be removed through the exploratory tunnel, speeding up the latter stages considerably. “We are removing all the spoil from the main tunnels through the exploratory: it is moved all the way to the discharge site using a series of conveyors and no trucking will be involved,” says

BBT-SE Bergmeister. In all there will be 17 million cubic feet of spoil to be disposed of, and this will come out through four access tunnels, of which the ones nearest the Austrian and Italian ends are already complete. The 1.3 kilometre Ampass access tunnel and the 2.4 kilometre Ahrental access, together with about a quarter of the exploratory tunnel on the Austrian side, have been completed.

The Wolf access tunnel was the last to be put out for tender for an estimated contract sum of 140 million earlier this year, and is now progressing well. This is also the longest, at four kilometres.

Currently, completion of the exploratory tunnel early in 2014 is a priority. TBMs capable of advancing 30 metres a day stabilise the ground as they go using piles and special grouting, and the tunnel is lined with 20 centimetre thick segments manufactured off site using a steam system that accelerates setting. The cutters mounted on the face of the TBM cut the rock into chips which go into a hopper that drops them onto a conveyor belt at speeds up to 700 cubic metres per hour.

The Brenner Base Tunnel will change the face of Europe’s infrastructure forever, says Konrad Bergmeister. “We have turned to the most innovative technologies and materials in designing this tunnel for a lifetime of more than 200 years!� he says. As a world authority in concrete engineering, his word is to be believed.

For more information about BBT-SE visit: www.bbt-se.com

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